- The launch of the Saint Jane serum will commence on January 10th in nearly 300 Sephora stores.
- An additional line of CBD-infused lipsticks are planned for later in 2020.
CBD has been gaining substantial popularity in the last year, but the new decade brings about serious interest in the use of the substance in skincare. As a result, clean beauty companies like Saint Jane may make it the next big trend. According to a recent article from Forbes, the company is now seeking to debut in 281 Sephora stores on January 10th, bringing their products to the forefront. As many have predicted, the rise in CBD skincare products seems to have the biggest momentum behind it as cannabis oil-infused beauty cosmetic industry is predicted to have the highest growth trend of any type of cannabidiol use.
This launch will be the biggest CBD promotion that the beauty chain of boutiques has ever supported. Sephora has taken on this innovative role before with their introduction of the Lord Jones line with both their website and in-store in 2018. However, Saint Jane is an entirely new endeavor as one of the fastest success stories that Sephora has ever taken on. Even though the company just launched their Luxury Beauty Serum four months ago, the product quickly became a best-selling formula after being launched online.
Casey Georgeson, the founder and CEO of the beauty brand, feels that this moment with Sephora is a moment to reflect on the journey she has gone through to get here. While she was still working to get her MBA at Stanford, she had even tried to get an internship with the North America headquarters for Sephora.
While many of the interns were the typical high school graduate and undergraduate experience level, the now-CEO already had experience as a producer at CNN and was the creator behind Cupcake Vineyards for one of the largest wine companies in the world, The Wine Group.
Beauty brand incubator Kendo quickly hired Georgeson as the leader of their partnerships as soon as she graduated. Some of the brands she ended up working with included Marc Jacobs, Kat Von D, and Disney for Sephora, but she was still relatively apprehensive about bringing her own product to the table. Speaking with Forbes, Georgeson said,
“Even with my background, to be totally honest, I thought, ‘There is no way Sephora is going to bring this on. We're not even a brand yet. We have 100 followers on Instagram.’ They're just going to look at this as a favor and tell me, ‘Okay Casey, this is a cute little idea you have here. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’”
Within just 15 minutes of receiving the sample of the Luxury Beauty Serum, vice president Cindy Deily of skincare merchandising at Sephora sent an email to Georgeson. This one email kicked off a series of events that has transpired into a January 10th launch date that will go down in history as a major moment for the CBD industry. Saint Jane originally was created on January 28th, 2019, and this launch has positioned the company in a place that most beauty companies spend their whole lifetime reaching for. Deily explained,
“We saw a strong desire for an assortment of prestige CBD offerings, and Saint Jane has been a pioneer in growing the space. With their goal of bringing CBD to the forefront as an efficacious ingredient in prestige skincare, Saint Jane is passionate about education and category innovation and ingredient exploration and are thrilled to introduce more of our community to this new indie brand.”
The name for the company wasn’t just pulled out of thin air; as Georgeson points out, Saint Jane was real.
“Saint Jane was an actual person—anointed into sainthood for healing people—specifically healing women that French society shunned…the elderly, the sickly, or unwed mothers. And like this pioneering feminist, we have a healing-centric approach to beauty. It has a double meaning for the innocent side of ‘Mary Jane,’ too, because I always wanted CBD to be the hero ingredient.”
Georgeson sees CBD as a nutrient for the skin, making it a star with the same power as hyaluronic acid and vitamin C. She points out that pairing it with the right ingredients can help to maximize the effects, adding,
“It’s a molecule not a miracle, and depending on what it’s paired with, it works even better. As the [beauty] industry gets more educated on cannabis, people are starting to see it as more of a supplement – a good for you ingredient versus as a psychoactive.”
All of the hemp that creates the CBD oil and other compounds in Saint Jane’s products are sourced from sustainable and female-owned farms. Every batch is tested to ensure consistent potency and purity, but with a third-party lab that is independent from the brand. While the facial serum offers 500 mg of CBD in every bottle, the body serum contains 200 mg. To enhance the formula, the concoctions include sea buckthorn, prickly pear, rosehip, and pomegranate, among other botanicals. Georgeson also went on to add:
“We want to nurture this relationship so that all of our retailers are not growing a mile wide and an inch deep” […] Every retailer places a specific role for us because of our inability to advertise, and Sephora adds credibility to our brand. We need an A-plus in Sephora to succeed long-term.” […] “There is more wood to chop here, so we want to be careful not to move on from products too quickly. Our pipeline is rich for the next year for Sephora, our other partners and for direct-to-consumer. We are understanding ways to launch exclusives and create buzz for every channel.”
There are also multiple mentions and customer reviews from O, The Oprah Magazine (Best Body Product), PopSugar (Most Innovative Product), The Zoe Report (Best New Luxury Skincare Product of 2019) and Health (Best Facial Oil).
Through 2020, Georgeson states that the Brand will be launching exclusive products for the Sephora store, while a CBD-infused lipstick line is planned for later in the year. It will be interesting to see the growth path CBD-infused cosmetics and beauty skin products have in 2020. While CBD and pain may currently be the most desired medicinal effect, the demand for cannabis oil creams, serums, lotions and the like is rising fast in the new decade and the Sephora beauty retailer's addition of the Saint Jane CBD luxury beauty skincare products are a good indication of how cannabis oil-infused cosmetics will fare in the new 2020 decade.
