Glow Recipe is introducing its second new serum of 2024 — and with it a new fruit franchise and blockbuster social media campaign to boot.
Launching Sept. 4 for $48, the Blackberry Retinol Blemish Serum is the brand’s first product formulated specifically to address adult acne, tapping a 0.16 percent triple-retinoid blend to reduce blemishes, while a mix of ectoin, vitamin K-rich blackberry extract and 8 percent glycerin seek to support the skin barrier.
“A big part of treating acne-prone skin is making sure you’re not inflaming the skin more,” said Christine Chang, cofounder and co-chief executive officer of Glow Recipe. “Gentleness has been part and parcel of the development process for not just the retinoid active, but the other, incremental ingredients, as well.”
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It’s a holistic approach which takes a cue from Chang’s and cofounder/co-CEO Sarah Lee’s Korean heritage, wherein the importance of skin-supporting ingredients is inextricable from that of skin treatment actives. And like the brand’s recent Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Hue Drops and Dew Balm SPF stick, the launch was catalyzed by community feedback.
“We hear questions about treating breakouts from consumers of all different ages, and looking around the market, we realized adult acne is something that still isn’t clearly addressed,” Lee said.
The launch marks a ninth addition to Glow Recipe’s serum portfolio, which comprises 40 percent of the brand’s total business. Though neither Chang nor Lee commented on first-year sales estimates for the serum, industry sources think the product could do around $15 million in sales during its first year on the market.
Glow Recipe will kick off its biggest influencer campaign to date to inaugurate the launch, having recruited 100 influencers with varying following sizes to test the serum and document their skin’s transformation over an eight-week course of use.
“We wanted to take a progressional approach to before-and-afters — which we’ve not really done in the past and haven’t seen on the market — in order to document improvement over time, versus strictly showing before and after the eight-week treatment, which does show those very visibly reduced blemishes, textures and post-acne dark marks,” Lee said.
The creators — who, to align with the brand’s expanding global purview, were tapped from around the world, represent myriad skin types and are aged 20 to 48 — will collectively share their treatment journeys online on drop day.
“They’re either Glow Recipe fans, members of our community program, or people who have been posting using the #AdultAcne, #SkinPositivity hashtags on social media posts — we found them and started these conversations with them,” Chang said of the cohort.
Last year, Glow Recipe reportedly doubled its retail sales to $300 million. Since then, it has upped its global market count to more than 35, following expansions with Sephora into Latin America and Europe. France, Spain and Italy comprise more than 50 percent of the brand’s European business, which spans 14-plus markets, while at Sephora Mexico — which the brand entered earlier this year — Glow Recipe ranks as the number-two serum brand.
Data from CreatorIQ, meanwhile, shows Glow Recipe generated $110.2 million in earned media value during the first half of 2024, a 65 percent half-over-half EMV increase that cemented its spot as the number-four skin care brand by the metric.
“The buzz has been strong, Sephora has been supporting us incredibly, and it’s been interesting to see markets we didn’t expect at the top — Poland, for instance, is a top-three or top-four market consistently, which has been incredible,” Lee said.
Following the recent splashy success of Hue Drops, which added a bronze tint to Glow Recipe’s hero Watermelon Glow Niacinamide Dew Drops and was estimated by sources to have raked in $300,000 in sales during its first day on the market, Chang and Lee are planning further forays into the makeup/skin care hybrid space.
“There’s been a lot of excitement from our community, and we’re working on developing our ‘skin-plus’ category for Q1 of next year,” Lee teased.
