Small Biz Spotlight is a new feature shining a light on small businesses across Greater Washington and how they’re pivoting through the pandemic.
AbsoluteJOI Inc.
About the business: The D.C.-based clean beauty brand has a skin care line for women with melanin-rich skin and hyperpigmentation. Its products include a night oil, cleanser and moisturizer. Dr. Anne Beal, its CEO and founder, runs the business with help from her daughters and husband. She also taps consultants, mainly women, with expertise in the beauty industry for part-time support.
Beal, a physician by training and medical researcher, has worked as president of The Aetna Foundation; deputy executive director for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), an independent organization created through the Affordable Care Act; and most recently, was appointed to the board of GlaxoSmithKline PLC.
How it got started: Beal was working as Sanofi’s chief patient officer, living in France in 2017, when she walked into a skin care store called Aroma Zone “and the place was filled with brown and Black women,” she recalls.
So she did some research, dove into the literature and found that Black and Latina women have circulating levels of parabens — preservatives in cosmetic products — significantly higher than the general population. And that’s important because parabens act like estrogen, and estrogen-sensitive tumors like uterine fibroids, breast cancer and endometriosis “are much more common and aggressive among women of color,” she said.
“So it was sort of a personal need that evolved into more of a public health challenge to address a nontoxic lifestyle particularly for women of color,” she said. She founded AbsoluteJOI — the “JOI” includes one letter from each of her daughters’ names — and launched the first product in December 2018.
The pandemic effect: In early 2020, AbsoluteJOI was growing, but “in a linear fashion,” with plans to kick into high gear and enter a bunch of retail stores later in the year, Beal said. “Then the pandemic came and we all went into quarantine, and it forced me to really shift with the online work that we were doing.”
Given Covid’s disproportionate impact on communities of color, the company started a weekly series featuring other Black businesses via Zoom and Instagram Live. “My followers could see and support other businesses and their followers could see and support my business,” she said. People widely turned to self care. And with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, “a number of retailers and people in the beauty business really started to think through their own efforts and what they were doing to support Black-owned businesses.”
The convergence of these dynamics led to an increase in sales and other opportunities, including grant funding from Glossier Inc., a national beauty products retailer. That’s what allowed Beal to bring on digital advertising and marketing support. AbsoluteJOI “completely knocked it out of the park for the holidays,” Beal said — both good and bad, because “we completely sold out.”
“So the good news is, there was definitely demand,” Beal said. “We have a lot of repeat customers who try our products and keep coming back for more.”
The challenge today: The business is booming — but, still, “I’m in the midst of being completely sold out,” Beal said. Her company must now maintain enough inventory to meet demand, which means ordering products several weeks ahead.
Now Beal is fundraising, aiming for $500,000 from angels, friends and family. A quarter of that will go toward buying that inventory, half will fund marketing and a quarter will cover payments to contractors.
Beal has gotten the business to this point with $50,000 in personal investment, $15,000 from a Fund Black Founders crowdfunding campaign in February 2020, $50,000 from Glossier and a $60,000 in-kind contribution from her manufacturer.
What’s next: In 2020, what Beal called “a classic startup year,” the company targeted 25% month-over-month growth and exceeded that, she said. This year, she’s projecting 15% month-over-month growth with an overall revenue target in the mid-six-figure range, she said.
She still intends to expand into retail and is aiming for AbsoluteJOI products to be sold in 50 locations by the end of the year “and position ourselves for placement in a national retailer in 2022,” she said. The initial roster would likely include local wellness shops — but with the pandemic, “I don’t know who’s back in business.”
She’ll start seeing who’s around once she’s fully vaccinated, she said, acknowledging that many of these small businesses are “in survival mode, much less being able to take on a new brand.”
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