Stripes group karen kenworthy skin#
Stripes group karen kenworthy series#

“It’s beauty on your terms, but, most importantly, it’s makeup that supports your skin through deep science and super unique formulations.” Karen Kenworthy, a partner at Stripes, stated, “Kosas stands for everything we believe in as investors in consumer brands-a strong and unique brand voice, a passionate founder who is adamant on product differentiation and efficacy, remarkable innovative DNA, and just great product.

“To me, Kosas is a clean beauty brand that is redefining the face of beauty,” she says. As Kosas was establishing itself, Phoebe Philo was turning Celine into the essence of sleek urban minimalism, and Yaitanes had a similar aspiration for her brand. It eliminated ingredients being reconsidered in the clean beauty segment such as parabens, silicones, sulfates and phthalates, and abutted skincare with botanicals to nourish skin while accentuating it. Yaitanes set out to craft a brand-not simply lipsticks-that was both cool and clean, effortless and effective, scientific and stylish, and unisex and feminine. “I’m not a bold glam girl, but I love makeup.” Clean beauty brand Kosas’s assortment spans 73 stockkeeping units priced $18 to $42. “Makeup brands were made for bold glam girls,” she told Beauty Independent in an interview last year. Prior to its launch, Yaitanes, who studied chemistry, biology and art in college, hadn’t been overly impressed with the makeup she’d tried. Instead, Yaitanes says they delivered “an enhanced version of yourself.” Even at its earliest stage, Kosas was about more than merchandise. The anti-liquid lipsticks, their neutral shades didn’t mask the mouth. Kosas started in 2015 with four lipsticks housed in square, matte black packaging. “It was important for us to partner with people who really understand the formula behind scaling a consumer brand.”

Stripes group karen kenworthy series#

This series B is about building the company that will help us scale the brand,” says Yaitanes. Now, we have really strong distribution partners and a deep community of really amazing people that are really connected to the brand. “This series B is very important to us, and it’s different from our series A, which was just when we were getting a foothold in the marketplace. In 2018, the brand completed a series A round estimated to have injected $2 million into its business.

Kosas declined to disclose the amount it raised in the series B round. In fact, enough think so that her brand Kosas has reeled in a series B funding round led by Erewhon, Califia Farms and Blue Apron backer Stripes with participation from the firms CircleUp, Beechwood Capital and Imaginary Ventures, and influencer couples Abe Cohen and Leandra Medine of ManRepeller, and Brandon and Arielle Charnas of Something Navy. Is Sheena Yaitanes the Estée Lauder of our age?Ī lot of investors think so.