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https://www.barrons.com/articles/good-company-saies-clean-green-approach-to-cosmetics-01663256381
Before Laney Crowell founded the cosmetics company Saie, she put in her time in Big Beauty. After working for Elle and Lucky magazines, Crowell spent about five years working in communications at Estée Lauder cosmetics. “I really got to see the inner workings of the best of the best, which was the most incredible learning experience,” Crowell says, who is based in New York.
Yet she was somewhat disillusioned by certain elements of the beauty business, because of the use of harsh chemical ingredients, the industry’s negative environmental impacts, and the mental health harm of promoting narrow visions of model beauty.
“I left with this really big idea to make beauty a bit better,” she says.
While running a beauty blog Crowell had bins overflowing with samples of clean products for hair and skincare, but noticed there was little makeup. She wondered why, and took her queries online. “I peppered [people] with questions—everything ranging from, ‘What would you create if you could create something? What brands do you like? What are your pain points?’”
The result of her queries was Saie. The name, Crowell says, comes from “our community saying what they want.”
Since its 2019 founding, Saie has become well-known online and welcomed the backing of big investors. Crowell, who won marketer of the year in Women’s Wear Daily’s 2021 Beauty Inc awards, has crafted Saie into the ideal of what she thinks beauty can be, focusing on clean ingredients, luxury, high performance formulas, and an earth-minded ethos.
Crowell says clean and mostly vegan products are important to her, as she had acne when she was younger, which was aggravated by the skin products she’d use. “It took me a really long time to realize that the cleaner the product I was using, the better my skin was.”
Everything’s chosen carefully from the formulas to models with different ages and skin types. (Crowell’s now 100-year-old grandmother starred in a campaign that went viral last year.)
“We’re creating products that rival any other brand on the market,” Crowell says. Earlier this year, the brand launched at cosmetics retailer Sephora online and in-store. (Products are also available at Saie’s website, or featured at retailers like Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle portal Goop.)
Saie started with only four essential products needed to “look great really quickly,” says Crowell, but now features a dozen products. These include liquid cheek blush, lip balm, lip gloss, and sunscreen.
One of the original products, Mascara 101 (US$24) is a clean, no-flake mascara with a special hydra-mineral complex. Crowell describes Saie’s products are “mostly vegan,” as the mascara features an ethically-sourced beeswax.
Viral success Glowy Super Gel highlighter (US$25), which is made of about 75% water, offers what Crowell calls a “gorgeous lit-from-within look.” It’s offered in bronzy Sunglow or champagne-hued Starglow shades.
Slip Tint (US$32) which won an Allure Best of Beauty award among other accolades, is a dewy, tinted moisturizer with SPF 35. Available in 14 shades, it contains hydrating ingredients like sweet pea, and other natural touches like licorice for brightening.
“The best way to think of all of our products are luxury skincare with pigment,” Crowell says. “You're doing great things for your skin when you're wearing them.”
It can be challenging to be green in the cosmetics industry because of packaging needs—especially as a smaller brand scaling up. But Saie takes part in a number of environmentally conscious initiatives to reduce its footprint. “We look at everything through that lens, of how can we have the smallest footprint possible on the planet,” she says.
Saie partners with plastic credit platform rePurpose Global which removes ocean plastic from waterways. Because of this, Saie removes twice the amount of plastic that it creates allowing it to be certified plastic negative. The company also tries to avoid virgin plastic, in favor of recycled where possible, Crowell adds. (The company also partners with Pact, a nonprofit collective that recycles beauty and wellness packaging that is mailed to them or dropped off at retail collection points.)
Crowell is also proud to work with 1% for the Planet, where the equivalent of 1% of gross sales is donated by member companies to nonprofit environmental organizations. Currently Saie supports coral restoration through this initiative—a cause close to Crowell’s heart. (She loves scuba-diving and has done so while traveling the globe, including in Spain, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.)
Saie is not only carbon neutral, but also part of Carbon Neutral Club, a collection of businesses that fund high-impact carbon offsets to cover the footprints of their employees as well.
The company’s future is currently taking shape in cosmetic testing labs. “We really pride ourselves in creating formulas that are totally new to the market,” Crowell says.
A few times a year, Saie directly asks consumers what they’re looking for. Hydrabeam concealer (US$26), which acts like an eye cream and concealer in one, is one such development. “It took us two years to perfect that formula,” Crowell says. Earlier this year it was launched after being requested by customers for just as long.
Before Laney Crowell founded the cosmetics company Saie, she put in her time in Big Beauty.
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