Why Aussie beauty brand Cinch Skin changed its approach to retail partnerships

Skincare makes up over 40 per cent of the total global cosmetics market and the product category continues to grow its market share.

One brand that is benefitting from this booming market is the Australian-owned and manufactured skincare business Cinch Skin, which is ready to scale globally after experiencing 500 per cent revenue growth in the past year, six years after being founded in 2016.

The 100 per cent all-natural, vegan and cruelty-free beauty brand caters to the growing demand for ‘clean’ beauty products amidst a broader shift of consumers shopping more sustainably. In 2024, the global revenue forecast for the natural cosmetics market is close to US$14 billion.

After growing the business initially through traditional bricks-and-mortar stockists, including its primary Priceline, founder Renee Moore has recently embraced a “launching backwards” approach and exited its partnership with the major Australian retailer, which was its primary sales channel by a significant margin, to pursue e-commerce growth.

Launching backwards

Moore said that she chose to part ways with Priceline in the post-pandemic climate of 2022 when it was acquired by Westfarmers, after an open conversation with the business.

“It was the scariest moment of my life,” Moore told Inside Retail.

Cinch’s partnership with Priceline lasted for six years, and Moore said, “Priceline were 100 per cent supportive and incredible throughout our partnership and exit.”

The brand launched in 375 Priceline stores in 2016. It also sold products online and direct-to-consumer (DTC) via its own website. Priceline’s original wholesale order, “Well and truly covered what we had spent on product,” Moore said.

“Our minimum orders were around 10,000 units for us internally, which was really scary and big at the time.”

“Teaming up with a retailer if you have the right margin will help you hit that first milestone within your business of covering your costs, allowing you to keep on promoting and going.”

The Priceline partnership opened the door to enquiries from other retailers. “We had pretty much every retailer, except for Sephora, reach out to us,” Moore said.

Moore held off partnering with other retailers for a year, as she wanted to focus on the demographic that was purchasing Cinch Skin from Priceline specifically and didn’t want to saturate the market.

Shortly after wholesaling to Adore Beauty, Cinch Skin partnered with The Hut Group through e-commerce platforms Recreate Yourself and Look Fantastic. Today, the brand is also stocked in Oz Hair and Beauty and A-Beauty, a niche platform showcasing only Australian beauty brands.

Letting the product speak for itself

Except for the initial pitch to Priceline, Moore hasn’t had to actively pitch Cinch Skin to other retailers, which she admits to being “good and bad”.

“Except for the grocery stores and Sephora, pretty much all other retailers reach[ed] out to us, but more so for exclusivity ranging which we just weren’t going to entertain at the time,” Moore said.

Moore believes two aspects differentiate the business. One is the investment in branding to ensure that the product stood out, and looked different. The other is its unique selling proposition as a minimalist skincare range.

“We know a couple of other brands are doing [it], but we stay true to what that minimalist skincare range looks like – having only four products is true to that testament,” she said.

The decision to exit Priceline was due to a difference between the strategies of the two businesses, Moore said, citing discounting as an example. At the time, Cinch Skin didn’t discount its products, but Moore noted that brands typically don’t have control over discounts offered by their retail partners.

After analysing the data, Moore realised there was a trend of shoppers waiting to purchase Cinch at a discount through retailer partners, and only buying DTC in between those sales.

“I had to stop and realise my brand value and look at why people were purchasing my product and that was because it served a need,” said Moore.

Since exiting Priceline over the past year, she has focused primarily on online retail partners as well as Cinch’s own e-commerce site.

Superior performance in business and self-care

Before founding Cinch Skin, Moore worked with big retailers in her roles at Coty, Sally Hansen and Rimmel for over 20 years, and she professes to have a heart and soul that beats for the retail industry.

Wanting to go out on her own, Moore was waiting to identify a clear gap in the market that made sense for her to pursue.

“It was really important that if I did go out on my own, that it would be a definite gap in the market,” she said.

While she was on maternity leave for her first child, Moore realised that her sometimes 10-step skincare routine was no longer a priority.

“I had that I guess ‘lightbulb moment’ of I want to make a multi-benefit skincare range for time-poor people specifically, not beauty experts,” she said.

Her main aim is to further the brand’s mission, which is to get women consistently using skincare every day.

“We are pioneering ‘skinimalism’ (minimalist skincare) and helping women gain more confidence in the industry,” Moore said.

She noted that the consumer climate at the time she launched Cinch was all about beauty influencers and the volume of products they were using. Cinch was designed “for someone that doesn’t want to sacrifice good skin, but hasn’t had the time, effort, money and brain space to really dive into the beauty industry,” Moore said.

Having realised her target market, Moore met with manufacturers to pitch her first product, the 5-in-1 Spray + Glow. In contrast to the advice of manufacturers, who saw an opportunity to make more products with less functionality in the name of profit, Cinch has stuck to its less is more ethos. It still only retails four skincare products, but in the next 12 months, one more is planned to launch.

As for growth, Moore says the brand is now well-positioned to significantly scale to meet the demand of the UK and European markets.

“At one stage, I think we were 80 per cent retail and 20 per cent e-commerce, which is crazy dangerous for a business. Now that’s completely flipped,” Moore said.

“We’ve just appointed a responsible person in the EU and UK which means that all of our labels are now approved and we are ready to go into either bricks-and-mortars or e-tailers over there, and [we] have a 3PL in the UK and Ireland so that Ireland can dispatch into the EU,” she explained.

A PR campaign in the UK doubled the brand’s website traffic instantaneously.

Beyond this, discussions with South Korean and Hong Kong retailers are underway, two regions that are now moving towards a “skincare diet”, in other words, reducing the number of skincare products they are using.

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