In the past 10 years in the beauty industry, there have been lots of celebrity-founded brands, there have been lots of independent brands, there have been lots of outside disruptive brands. Rhode has gotten to this level so quickly. Why?
I don’t know if I can exactly say why. I think that we come with a different point of view when it comes to beauty, and our assortment is super curated, super edited. I like to make these kind of staple products where it’s one of everything good. And when I say that I mean one really good moisturizer, one really good blush, all these products that when I travel and when I’m going out for the day—things that I want to throw in my bag. And I want to make the best formula of that thing, so that I don’t feel the need to go buy it from somewhere else. That was the whole ethos of launching the brand. And also having really good branding and a really good aesthetic.
And I feel like for me when I’m building Rhode, it’s a whole universe and a whole world that I’m building. And when I open up that world, my hope for why people have really gravitated towards it is that they feel like they’re a part of something that is bigger than skin care. It’s not just a beauty brand, it’s a whole lifestyle. And that was something I feel like I really saw with the phone cases, and how they really integrated into people’s day-to-day lives.
Was the phone case your idea?
It was my idea. We were sitting in a meeting and I had one of those sticky cases on the back of my phone, the suction thing, and I kept sticking the lip gloss onto the suction. And I’m holding it up and I’m looking around the room at everyone in the meeting and we were kind of like, Oh! I’m like, can someone quickly Google if this exists? Thinking a hundred percent there has to be something on Amazon. And it didn’t exist! So I was like, let’s try to do it as quickly as we can. And that’s how the phone case was born.
What is your ambition in the men’s grooming or men’s beauty space?
Honestly, I really feel like skin care is genderless. It doesn’t need to be geared towards specifically men or specifically women. Now I do understand that with men, that there’s certain grooming things that are needed, beards and all that kind of thing. But for me, my whole thing with Rhode was that I really wanted it to be a skin-care brand that was super elevated and chic in the coloring and the packaging, so that if your boyfriend went into your bathroom and wanted to use something, they wouldn’t feel like, Oh, this is really girly and everything is pink. My husband uses Rhode, and has since the beginning and loves it, and I have a lot of male friends that are obsessed with it and use it. And I’ve put a lot of guys who never really were into skin care onto the Rhode stuff, tons of Justin’s friends, and they come back to me and they’re like, “I ran out of my cleanser, I need more.” And that, to me, makes me so happy, because I think that skin care is for everybody and everybody should have access to a great skin-care routine, and it doesn’t take much to have a great skin-care routine. Even if you’re just washing your face and putting on moisturizer at night, that’s doing a lot more than doing nothing.