Iris&Romeo, a clean beauty brand based in Northern California, has announced a retail expansion into Sephora, in conjunction with a Series A partnership backed by US-based investment firm, True Beauty Ventures, a beauty and wellness dedicated emerging growth fund.
Since 2019, Iris&Romeo has become highly-recognized as a leading innovative, clean, skincare-makeup hybrid brand and is committed to thoughtful, multi-functional hero products for the beauty minimalist. The brand believes in modern essentialism, creating tinted skincare with serum-strength actives, designed to create more time for self care and less waste for the planet.
In conjunction with the Series A announcement, Iris&Romeo’s hero essentials will launch on Sephora.com on December 26th, including the award-winning Weekend Skin SPF 50 and cult-favorite Best Skin Days™.
“Launching at Sephora is a pivotal moment for our brand. It gives us an opportunity to tell our story on a bigger level and for a whole new group of customers to try our products and fall in love,” expressed Michele Gough-Baril, the Company’s founder, “for me personally, it’s a dream come true moment because I’ve worked with Sephora for many years on other brands, and to do it now with the brand I founded is beyond exciting.”
“We’re thrilled to introduce Iris&Romeo to our clients as a part of our growing clean makeup assortment,” said Amy Abrams, VP Merchandising, Makeup at Sephora, “with its minimalist and simplified approach to beauty, Iris&Romeo offers multi-use products that are clean, high-performing, and seek to improve skin’s wellness with every wear. We look forward to introducing this innovative brand to our Sephora community and know that it will be a great addition to our assortment.”
The Company plans to use capital to improve retail readiness through supply chain sufficiencies, elevating brand-first content, and securing key hires to complement its current best-in-class team.
“We are thrilled to bring on True Beauty Ventures as our Series A lead. Rich and Cristina’s expertise in the early stage beauty space is unparalleled. Having Cristina on our board will be incredibly valuable as we scale,” Tara Desai, the Company’s CEO commented, “This Series A funding will unlock the brand’s ability to reach more consumers. Our existing customer base is exceptionally loyal. Strengthening our ability to reach her in more places will accelerate our growth, especially within our 35+ demographic.” Tara Desai joined Iris&Romeo in 2022, after working for brands such as Estee Lauder and Marc Jacobs.
“After three years of building a strong relationship with Iris&Romeo, we are thrilled to announce our lead Series A investment,” said Cristina Nunez, Co-Founder and Partner at True Beauty Ventures . “The brand is at a major inflection point driven by excellent product development, strong consumer demand, and an industry tailwind of multi-functional makeup-skincare hybrids. We are excited to support Iris&Romeo in this next phase of growth.”
