Not every throwback has a triumphant comeback, at least not right away.
When former Johnson Publishing executives Desirée Rogers and Cheryl Mayberry McKissack acquired Fashion Fair out of bankruptcy in 2019, they set out to revive one of the most important brands in United States beauty history. The reborn brand landed at Sephora in 2021 with newly developed formulas, rolling out to 235 stores in the U.S. and Canada.
The Sephora launch put it in front of a new generation of consumers nearly 50 years after it was started by Eunice W. Johnson, wife of Johnson Publishing founder John H. Johnson and the force behind the Ebony Fashion Fair, to cater to Black women overlooked by the beauty industry. But Fashion Fair returned to a very different beauty industry.
As Allure observed upon its Sephora debut, “we’re now living in the post-Fenty Beauty era,” one in which inclusivity, while not universal, had become a much bigger part of the beauty conversation. Younger Sephora consumers had a plethora of choices and didn’t have the familiarity with Fashion Fair that their mothers or grandmothers did. Winning them over proved a heavy lift for the brand.
Fashion Fair’s Sephora launch came amid a surge of industry and consumer interest in Black-led brands following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Retailers pledged to increase representation on their shelves, with Sephora among those signing the Fifteen Percent Pledge, and capital flowed toward Black beauty businesses.
In the years since, that attention has ebbed, and brands have felt the effects. Fashion Fair has departed Sephora, making it one of the latest in a string of Black-led brands that have entered and exited its assortment, including Ami Colé, Hyper Skin, Adwoa Beauty, KNC Beauty, Grace Eleyae and Sunday II Sunday. Ami Colé and Adwoa Beauty have shuttered, Hyper Skin has paused operations and KNC Beauty is teasing a return. Grace Eleyae and Sunday II Sunday continue to operate.
Fashion Fair’s Sephora experience prompted a reassessment of what success should look like for the brand. Rather than chasing younger consumers or racing toward $100 million in sales, the brand is reaffirming its focus on 40-plus Black and brown consumers and pursuing slower, more deliberate growth. Events and select distribution partners with strong ties to its core audience are playing a pivotal role in its new strategy.
Beauty Independent spoke with Rogers, who also owns mass-market beauty brand Black Opal with Mayberry McKissack, the pair having acquired it from Mana Products in 2019, about Fashion Fair’s Sephora departure, why she’s no longer chasing younger consumers, the difficulties facing Black-led brands in beauty specialty retail, how she’s rethinking distribution for Fashion Fair and Black Opal, and her revised ambitions for Fashion Fair.

Why did Fashion Fair leave Sephora?

Fashion Fair has always been focused on Black and brown skin. That’s our DNA. We are not a general market brand. Our collection is perfectly suited for every skin tone, but we think of ourselves as the experts in color matching for Black and brown skin. If you had to say, “What is Fashion Fair and what’s their niche?” our niche is 40-plus Black and brown consumers.

We found that there was a bit of a mismatch, and we didn’t find our customer at Sephora. So, we jointly made a decision to move out of Sephora.

Our customers are used to getting a certain amount of one-on-one service and consultation. They want a look that’s easy to duplicate at home, but they’re not going to be the trendiest makeup people in the universe. They know what they want to look like. They know they want a natural look.

We found that out together as we explored, “Who really is the Fashion Fair woman? What is she looking for? What does she want?” She’s typically 40-plus, working or maybe volunteering, has children and is very busy. She doesn’t want a 20-step makeup routine. She’s not looking at the latest trends, other than vegan, cruelty-free, natural ingredients, dermatologist-approved. She wants us to be part of her community.

Desirée Rogers and Cheryl Mayberry McKissack acquired Fashion Fair out of bankruptcy in 2019 and relaunched the historic beauty brand in 2021. Today, they’re pursuing a more focused strategy centered on its core 40-plus Black and brown consumers. Heather Houston

When Fashion Fair relaunched at Sephora in 2021, the brand had strong awareness among older consumers, but Sephora’s younger customers didn’t necessarily know its history. How did you think about reaching that younger customer at the time?

We’ve learned a lot. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that we made a perfect decision because we didn’t. At the same time, when you go in, you don’t get all the demographic information of what’s going on with that retailer, but I think over the time that we’ve been there, it got even younger. That didn’t help us. We thought, “Won’t it be great to have this younger audience coupled with our audience?”

I am perfectly content with Fashion Fair doing 40-plus. I don’t need to try to get the 20-year-olds. That doesn’t mean I’m pushing them away. I just finished matching a 25-year-old and her mother who’s 50-something. I love that, but we need to stick to our group. There are billions of dollars in the market of women in that age group. I don’t need to stretch myself.

The market is so competitive and tough. You really have to pick and conquer a lane and do it really well.

How is the focus on the 40-plus consumer influencing product development?

We’re working on a whole skincare line right now. That’s not going to be for somebody who’s 20. It’s going to be for someone that’s 40-plus. The ingredients that we’re choosing to be in our products are different at 40 than they are at 20.

Everyone says, if they’re 20, they want blurring. Well, blurring is one thing. Making certain that your wrinkles aren’t amplified is another. In darker skin tones, there’s discoloration that happens naturally in the cheek area, around the mouth area and the under-eye area. You don’t necessarily have that when you’re 20, but you do get that about 40.

I guess the bottom line is we learned a lesson, and we are very comfortable now saying 40-plus. I don’t think I was comfortable in 2021 saying that. I was like, “We’re for Black and brown skin, and we’re going to grab everybody.”

We found that we didn’t necessarily have the embrace at the store level for this brand either. It’s not the trendiest. It doesn’t have the most glittery shades. We had to really work super hard at the store level. We’re a small company, and we had to make decisions on where we’re going to put capital.

Fashion Fair is still at Macy’s. Where else do you see it heading with distribution?

I’m thinking about it in a less traditional way. Everyone in the beauty space is like, “It’s Ulta, it’s Sephora. These are the big boys. If you’re not there, you can’t win.”

Look at where Black women shop. It’s extremely fragmented. It’s beauty supply stores. I need to meet people where they are. That is what we’re doing.

Macy’s has traditionally been very strong in the Black community. Not everybody shops there, I get it, but they are very respected in the community, and people will go out of their way to be color matched at a Macy’s.

We’re thinking through what else we want to do. At one time, we had a big business at Dillard’s, so they could potentially be another candidate, particularly in the South. There have been quite a few requests for Dillard’s from our customers. That’s where they shop, and they have a bigger footprint. They also are very specialized in the beauty space in terms of providing help to consumers.

Our customers want someone to actually touch them and walk them through color matching. So, we think, how do you get that at scale? One of the things that is very important to us is spending a lot of time at these big conferences where there are 3,000, 5,000 women from across the country.

The Black and brown space doesn’t fit the traditional model right now. A lot of these customers are wearing brands that are not Black right now, and they’re getting them at department stores. Maybe some are getting them at Sephora or Ulta, but I think the percentages are smaller than what you would think at those locations.

What we found is that Black women are located in 33 markets across America. We want to double down with our partners in those 33 markets. You may see us do partnerships with a beauty supply store that sells a lot of hair.

We are going to locate ourselves where there’s a sizable market of people that match our consumer. It’s not going to look like your traditional footprint that we all know.

How is Fashion Fair performing today compared to when you relaunched it?

When we launched in Sephora, they bought a lot of product, but buying the product and selling the product are two different things. The lipsticks crossed over. White women were buying the lipstick. Our lipsticks did phenomenal at Sephora, so we’ve got to make up that business. Macy’s, with a third of the stores, is almost doing as much as Sephora.

I’m not in a race. This is a slower build, but I think it’s a build that will last. It’s just different. It took me a while to admit this and think through this. There are tricks up our sleeves that are going to give us the kind of volume that I think we can definitely get. They’re nontraditional contracts that we’re working on, both domestically and internationally.

Fashion Fair’s current assortment spans foundations, powders, concealers, lip products, blushes and serum, with products priced from $23 to $42 at Macy’s. Bestsellers include Crème to Powder Skin, SkinFlex Stick, Iconic Lipstick and Fabulous Serum.

We’ve seen a number of Black-owned beauty brands struggle or close in recent years, including Ami Colé. What did you make of Ami Colé’s closure given your experience?

They created this darling and then all of a sudden the darling was gone, but other Black-owned beauty brands shut down or got sold. What I make of it is the model that we’re going to need to be successful is just different, although not for everybody. There are a couple that have crossed over. The question for brands is, do you want to cross over?

If you want to be successful in these mega chains, the economics don’t work unless you cross over. They just don’t work. Once you understand that, the question is, OK, what are you going to do? If you make a decision not to cross over, then what’s your strategy?

What about the funding challenges facing Black-led beauty brands?

We need funding that is going to be there for the longer term. This is not going to be a play where all of a sudden this thing is $100 million. It’s going to be much more strategic and much slower, which I’m OK with.

I had to talk to myself about this, but I’m OK with this as long as we’re able to build something that’s sustainable and that is moving in the right direction. I’m OK with something that’s healthy and smaller that’s benefiting my community rather than some big mega monster where we’re having to compromise who we are.

How are you thinking about Black Opal’s retail strategy?

Black Opal is in Target, Walmart, CVS, J.C. Penney and Ulta. After working those relationships on the mass side of the house, what we’re finding is many of them are leaning into what we represent. We’re finding out things that are really going to be beneficial to the partnerships that we didn’t know five years ago.

Even post-George Floyd, I think organizations are making decisions about who they think is good for the long term and who maybe is not good for the long term for their business. There are ways these organizations can flex to help the little guy. You just have to be smart about it. Six years ago, I didn’t even know these things existed. Today I’m like, “What? We can do that?”

When you talk to Black women today about what they want from a beauty brand, what do they tell you?

The consumers that we are identifying want simple solutions to their beauty needs that they can duplicate at home quickly. They want products that are good for their skin and help to alleviate some of the issues they are identifying.

They also want to understand the use of various products based on the look they are trying to achieve, not some romanticized version of themselves. When we are out in the field, I see many Black women who are still not matched perfectly and are mixing several shades together.

They also do not feel that they are getting the help they need on the ground and struggle to find someone who understands what they want, that they trust and are comfortable getting advice from.

Mass-market beauty brand Black Opal, also known as BLK/OPL, is sold at Target, Walmart, CVS, J.C. Penney and Ulta Beauty. All of its products are priced under $20.

You said you’re comfortable with Fashion Fair not rapidly becoming a $100 million brand. What are your growth goals for it?

We are patient. We would like to see 5% to 7% growth each year. Most importantly, we want partners that supplement what we are doing and that our consumers are interested in experiencing.

We are also investing in our digital footprint. We expect to offer subscriptions later this month as well as an MUA loyalty program.

If you could rewind five years and make different decisions around the relaunch, what would those decisions have been and why?

We would launch in less retailers. It is difficult for a small company to “please” multiple retailers given the various demands that are made. Go deep with the retailers that we have and build those relationships. Expand slower.

I think we would have also been more focused on the strengths of both brands versus getting caught up in beauty trends. Don’t launch two beauty brands during the pandemic!