If you weren’t already incorporating collagen into your skincare routine, you’re about to.
In Ep. 136 of Earned, Conor sits down with Noella Gabriel, co-founder and president of ELEMIS—the UK-based skincare brand whose beloved, collagen-powered products propelled it to the top five of our Skincare EMV leaderboard.
To start, we dive into Noella’s early years which were marked by an intense focus on voice training, and learn how this period of her life instilled a profound understanding of the connection between breath, body, and skin health—a philosophy that would later become a cornerstone of ELEMIS’ ethos. Noella recounts the pivotal moments, including a life-changing call from Linda Steiner, that sparked the birth of ELEMIS, and her enduring passion for essential oils and skin wellness. Next, Noella shares an insider's view of the innovative strategies that propelled ELEMIS to global success. We then discuss the brand’s digital innovation and global expansion, highlighting the strategic merger with L'Occitane. To close the show, Noella shares how she finds balance in everyday life through her love of music and being a mother.
We’ve included a couple of highlights from the episode below, but be sure to check out the full video above, or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
“Who is the ELEMIS consumer? You've got to get to that DNA of your consumer”: How ELEMIS Wins By Meeting Their Consumers’ Unique Needs
Conor Begley: What have you learned about going global, and about entering the U.S. market more specifically? Why do you think ELEMIS has had so much success?
Noella Gabriel: I think the secret there was going digital first, just launching commercially, And really [figuring out], who is the ELEMIS U.S. consumer? What do they want, what are they liking? You've got to get to that DNA of your consumer before you start rolling out because that's a costly exercise.
We went digital-first with like 15 to 20 SKUs max, and we hammered home that collagen story. Every touch point was talking about collagen, your skin health, your collagen health. Then we needed to get that EMV. We needed to get the noise out there, we needed to get the drum beating about the brand and who we are, and of course we merged with ULTA.
First we led with our Superfood collection. When going into ULTA, we were thinking about how we were going to stand out and be disruptive there. Of course, our Superfood line had all of that going for us already: the color, the vibrance, the association with superfoods. We did the end caps and all through the aisle so it became this lovely traffic-stopping moment. It brought a bit of fun into skincare. It was easy to educate, it wasn't labor intensive. That was a stroke of genius, if I'm honest. And then we decided we have to grow up, because now we have a serious audience. We're now number two or three on the EMV leaderboard. We've just started the rollout into Sephora, which is very exciting.
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