It’s the year of retail expansion for Iota, the body care brand founded by Monique Meneses in 2023.
Iota is debuting in 860 Ulta Beauty doors on March 30 before expanding its digital partnership with Nordstrom into nationwide brick-and-mortar doors in the summer, marking a significant growth in its footprint since it first debuted with Credo Beauty.
The brand boasts culinary hero ingredients, like white truffle and bergamot from Italy, lemons from Argentina or yuzu peels from Japan’s Shikoku island in its formulas, and Meneses sees real appetite for Iota’s value proposition.
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“The broader wellness conversation has a lot to do with our positioning and where we see the market fit. If you look at what brands like Seed and Poppi did for gut health, they took complex science and made it part of everyday life in a fun, aspirational and approachable way,” Meneses said. “That’s the same approach we’re taking with a deep dive into heritage and the ingredient story. We’re hoping to do the same with the skin microbiome. Our name literally comes from ‘microbiota.’”
Much of the brand’s existing assortment will be debuting with Ulta, including its Brightening Body Wash, Super Cloud Body Serum, Diamond Truffle Body Oil, Fresh-Baked Madeleines Brightening Hand Cream, and Táche Pistachio Milk Latte Lip Treatment. The latter two are limited edition, made in partnership with Dominique Ansel and Táche, respectively. Prices will range from $23 to $50.
There are talks of other exclusive products hitting shelves down the line, Meneses said.
“It’s bringing this ingredient heritage story to life, as well as bringing a sense of new and freshness to the Ulta customer,” Meneses said. For example, “The limited-edition strategy has always been intentional. The ingredient drives the fragrance, delivers the benefit and shapes the entire sensorial experience. That’s something our customer gets excited about.”
Meneses is pulling all the levers for the launch, including paid media and influencer campaigns, and investing in educating Ulta’s beauty advisers on the product. As a part of the launch, Iota — which Meneses bootstrapped alongside her husband — took outside capital of undisclosed size for the first time. That round included Sidekick Partners, Touch Capital, Era VC, Palette Ventures and Blueprint Capital.
“We knew that to take Iota to the next level, to show up properly in major retail and scale our vision, we needed the right partners behind us,” Meneses said. “In terms of this year, we’re leaning into momentum. We have more limited-edition drops in the pipeline, new formulations, and we’ve always been intentional about how we grow and that won’t change. But the stage is bigger now and we’re ready for it.”
With much coming down the pike, Meneses said consumer behaviors gave her the confidence to expand the business. “The retailers we speak to say that we’re filling the gap [between wellness and beauty],” she said. “Something we constantly hear from customers is with body care, they’ve always felt like they’ve had to choose between scent and results. Iota sits in the middle of that Venn diagram.”
