BYBI, a U.K.-based sustainable skin-care brand, has raised $7 million in a Series A round of funding.
The investment was led by Point King Capital, which has invested in The Beauty Chef and existing investor Unilever Ventures. Ian Lopatin, founder of the ath-leisure brand Spiritual Gangster, also participated in the round.
The investment will be used to help fuel BYBI’s U.S. expansion. On Jan. 17, the brand is rolling out an assortment of skus to 1,841 Target doors.
BYBI was founded in 2017 by Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minarovic, who prior to starting the brand coauthored a blog and hosted a podcast called “Clean Beauty Insiders.” With BYBI, the pair aimed to create an efficacious skin-care line using ingredients that are as sustainably sourced as possible.
“Sustainability is a movement, not a moment,” Rutterford said. “A lot of investors we spoke to [were attracted to] how seriously we take it.”
The brand has developed its own auditing system, “The Susty Score,” which uses three factors to determine an ingredients’ carbon footprint and quantify the impact that using the product will have on the environment. For packaging, BYBI uses sugarcane polyethylene, recyclable glass and grasspaper and plant-based inks to ensure optimal recycling. The brand has also created its own recycling system, ReBYBI, which allows consumers to return their used BYBI bottles to be sterilized and reused.
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The average BYBI price point is $18. The products are labeled vegan and cruelty-free. They include items such as the Babe Balm, a multipurpose hydrating balm made with shea butter, vegan fruit wax, calendula and coenzyme Q10 and hibiscus oil. The Target assortment, which will consist of eight to 12 skus per store, includes BYBI’s popular skin boosters, which can be added to serums, moisturizers and masks.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the brand has grown 200 percent year-over-year since launch. It is distributed in about 30 countries across Europe and Southeast Asia, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. BYBI is sold in Sephora overseas. Its only prior presence in the U.S. was at Credo Beauty and on revolve.com.
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