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“What was your big break?”
Courtesy of Nicolas Travis
InMy Beauty Break, we’ll dig into the behind-the-scenes details the money, the aha!
moments, and the mistakes of the biggest brands in the industry.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Courtesy of Nicolas Travis
But nothing else about Travis' story has been small.
Allure: How did your path to being a beauty-brand founder begin?
Nicolas Travis:My passion for skin care started when I was a teenager.
Courtesy of Nicolas Travis
And that’s how my passion started.
Having my own skin-care line was always something that I was really drawn to.
Allure: You said you were completing your master’s degree.
How had you gotten to that point?
And then I got my master’s in international business.
I really have nothing to lose, so why don’t I just give it a shot?"
Allure: When did you finally combine them to form your own brand?
None of them got back to me.
But I still needed to get a job, so I did PR and social media for a while.
I was doing well, but I wasn’t fulfilled.
I couldn’t shake off the itch to revisit the business plan that I wrote.
I quickly realized I was never going to make a million dollars in my job at an ad agency.
I really have nothing to lose, so why don’t I just give it a shot?
So that’s what I did.
Allure: How did you “just give it a shot”?
Travis:I started working onAllies of Skinin 2013.
Luckily, my siblings were both willing to pitch in.
We launched in spring of 2016 with those three products, and that was how it was started.
Allure: That’s incredible.
Have your brother and sister been pleased with their investment?
They were like, “No, you save the equity for yourself.”
I think they’re regretting it now.
Yeah, they probably are regretting it.
Allure: They must be.
Can you tell me about your first job?
Travis:I have been working since I was 15.
I also did a lot of drama in high school.
I was really into that as well.
But now I’m in the beauty business.
With acting or a great film or a great song, it really connects people.
And I like to think that that’s kind of what we do.
That’s a good distinction.
Speaking of which, what would you say Allies of Skins brand philosophy is?
Travis:At Allies of skin, we’re driven by an ethos we call “supercharged clinical.”
For example, we have the world’s firstwaterless 35 percent vitamin C serum.
Anyone who is familiar with vitamin C knows it is a very testy, very difficult-to-formulate ingredient.
Any time you put vitamin C with water, it starts to oxidize.
So we made our formula waterless, and it’s also the most potent formula on the marketplace.
You own your routine; just buy what you need."
And it’s always been like that.
Allure: What do you consider your big beauty break?
Travis:I think it was when we launched PSA in every single Sephora store throughout Asia.
To have had two brands at Sephora Asia was a really big deal.
When you see both your brands on the shelves that was really cool.
Allure: That’s like when both your kids go to Harvard.
How did you end up launching a second brand?
NT:About two years ago, Sephora Asia launched Allies of Skin in every single store.
That really broke my heart.
It’s kind of a fun take on what skin care should be.
And they before they saw anything gave me a contract.
They were like, “Just go do it.
We need it.”
They’re always looking for new brands.
But more importantly, I think they’re looking for brands that fit a certain price point.
And that skew a little bit younger because that’s the next generation we are trying to cultivate.
So I think we check a lot of boxes for them.
Travis: Every single country has different regulatory needs.
For example, in the U.S., it’s a free-for-all.
you could pretty much do whatever you want.
But in Asia, it’s very, very different.
Singapore is more relaxed.
Hong Kong has few restrictions.
Then you have countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia that are really tricky.
Like for example, in Thailand, you cannot use the phrase, “pigmentation corrector.”
And in Indonesia, you have to justify every single raw material you use.
They don’t recognize a bunch of the novel antioxidants that we use.
It’s a big play for us.
Probiotics are not allowed in China.
And in Japan, I found out that anything above 0.2 percent ofsalicylic acidis considered toxic.
Allure: Do you have any advice for newer or aspiring founders as they think about funding their brands?
Travis:You have to be very purposeful with who you raise money from.
All these people are on our cap table.
I call them my kitchen cabinet.
I go to them for advice, and it has been very useful.
Allure: Anything else you recommend?
Travis:I decided to raise only what I needed.
So the temptation is to think, “Oh, OK, I need 20 million as well.”
But money’s not free.
If you raise 20 million, it’s like 20 times the pressure.
When you raise that much money, you have to spend it.
And there’s no way it’s possible for you to spend $20 million.
“You have to be very purposeful with who you raise money from.”
Allure: Once you get funding, you have to invest it in ways that really matter.
We started off all serums and all mists with plastic packaging.
Once we got funding, it was time to think, “Hey, wait a minute.
I don’t want to keep using single-use plastics.”
It also allows us to look intorefillable packsin the future as we scale.
As we grow, we want to become more mindful.
