Yahoo Movies Nyakio Grieco Unveils Relevant’s First Fragrance
Relevant: Your Skin Seen, the skin care brand founded by serial beauty entrepreneur Nyakio Grieco, is making its first category expansion by moving into fragrance.
Called 13 Stems, the fragrance launches Tuesday at Thirteen Lune, the inclusive retail concept Grieco cofounded with Patrick Herning in 2020, and is Relevant’s first product outside of skin care. It is priced from $32 for a travel size to $92 for 50 milliliters.
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Although Grieco has been on a roll with new businesses — Relevant only launched last year — she said a fragrance has always been in the cards. “It’s something I found to be deeply therapeutic and healing,” Grieco said. “I knew I was always going to introduce it because I love the ritual behind fragrance, finding what that experience can be…Creating 13 Stems was a culmination of stepping into this new chapter of my life.”
The fragrance was developed by Robertet’s Jérôme Epinette, and includes top notes of freesia and green peppercorn; mid notes of cucumber, woody bamboo, french mimosa and violet leaf, and a base of cashmere, crisp amber and white leather.
“I love really green [grassy] fragrances but often they can be polarizing. I wanted a really balanced, gender-neutral fragrance that would enhance someone’s pheromones,” Grieco said. “All the notes combined together smells great on all genders.”
The fragrance is also free of phthalates, parabens and sulfates, and is cruelty free as well as gender-neutral, given the brand’s inclusive value proposition.
The name, a self-explanatory nod to Thirteen Lune, was also inspired by Grieco’s own journey as a longtime founder. She created her first brand, Nyakio Beauty, in 2002 and later sold it to Unilever in 2017.
“Being an entrepreneur, we’re always seeking the ‘bloom.’ The biggest a-ha moment for me in cocreating Thirteen Lune was the moment I needed to honor the stem and core of who I am. Blooming is important, but it’s my stem that gave me the ability to cocreate something that aligned my passion and purpose,” Grieco said.
Thirteen Lune is performing well. It is wrapping up the rollout of its shop-in-shops inside 600 JCPenney locations nationwide, and will also be debuting its flagship in Los Angeles later this year. In January, it closed an $8 million seed plus investment round with new participation from the BrainTrust Fund.
“We’re continuing to onboard some incredible brands, really excited about the flagship store — this is our first stand-alone brick-and-mortar store outside of JCPenney,” Grieco said.
Relevant is also said to perform well. At launch, industry sources estimated the brand to hit $10 million in sales for its first year on the market, a figure Grieco didn’t comment on.
She still has expansion on her mind. Among her priorities for the businesses are “continuing to explore taking both Thirteen Lune and Relevant: Your Skin Seen global in 2023 or 2024,” she said.
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