Shen Beauty’s Jessica Richards: Let the consumer choose 'to shop toxic, organic or clean'

Although growing up in an “organic lifestyle” meant eating “turkey and sprouts” at school instead of tater tots, Jessica Richards, founder of Shen Beauty, benefitted from that "granola" upbringing in Southern California, she said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. It allowed her to narrow in on her future niche of clean beauty.

“It was 100% the mission and the proposition of Shen from day one to import products that were not sold in the U.S. -- that my friends, family, everybody always wanted -- and to focus on and only sell organic and natural [products],” said Richards. She opened Shen Beauty in Brooklyn in 2010, when the borough was still a beauty desert of sorts.

Although Sephora is now filled with a mix of both heritage and indie beauty brands, at the time, consumers were more focused on “brand recognition and buying from marketing” in magazines, Richards said. To appeal to the brand-focused consumer audience at the time, she brought Bobbi Brown products into the store, which “made people more confident and OK with shopping brands that they had never heard of before.”

Simultaneously, “[customers] also wanted the heavy payoff of the pigments that mainly come from non-clean beauty brands," said Richards. "That was the catalyst for me in realizing that people want organic, natural, clean -- whatever you call it. But they [also] want results.”

Moving forward, while Richards doesn’t have an interest in opening up any more store locations in New York, she does plan to open brick-and-mortar in California and to launch a “full site rebuild” next year. Regardless of whether customers shop on the East Coast, the West Coast or online, Richards plans to maintain a focus on “showcasing products and giving the consumer the understanding of what it will do to their skin and how it will help them."

“[It’s] an interesting thing to see a woman feel better about themselves after buying products," said Richards.