Originally published on Huddle Today on April 27, 2021
HALIFAX — In 1870, Thomas Dixon, a pharmacist in Yorkshire, England, created a skin balm that aimed to treat a variety of skin issues his patients were dealing with.
He formulated the balm with high concentrations of natural active ingredients he knew would help to tackle skin redness, itching, inflammation, cracking and dryness. His formula needed to actually work, he thought. Otherwise, his customers would take their business elsewhere.
Over 150 years later, Dixon’s philosophy still runs deep in Skinfix, a Halifax-headquartered company that’s taking the beauty and skincare world by storm in the United States and Canada through beauty retail giant Sephora.
Dixon’s balm was discovered in 2012 by Amy Gordinier, who was looking for new opportunities in Nova Scotia, where she had moved to start a family. Previously, she’d worked for L’Oréal, and held leadership positions at Jo Malone and Estee Lauder. Through networking with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), she met Thomas Dixon’s great, great-granddaughter, Karen Warren, who was still making the balm out of her kitchen in rural Nova Scotia.
“There was a lot of history and story there and the family had continued to make this balm. This woman, Karen Warren, had worked for the government and at some point, she said, ‘You know, I want to try and make this into a brand,'” says Gordinier.
Warren even got a name trademarked: Skinfix.
“Which was genius,” said Gordinier. “Coming from beauty, the fact that she was able to get that mark is pretty incredible. It’s hard to get a really good mark like that.”
At the time, Warren was manufacturing and packaging the balm for Shoppers Drugmart, where it was marketed as a diaper cream, a rash paste and a product to treat eczema. At face value it wasn’t a glamourous-sounding product, but having worked in the industry for major brands, Gordinier noticed something special about the Skinfix balm.
“It’s waterless … so it was just loaded with ingredients. There was no water to fill it all up. It was just high-levels of medicinal actives, things that are Health Canada and FDA approved,” she says.
“Coming from beauty, you can usually sprinkle an ingredient in and make a marketing claim. One ingredient that builds your marketing story around, but you could never formulate like this. I was super excited.”
Gordinier mortgaged her house, borrowed some money and purchased Skinfix at the end of 2012. By early 2014, Skinfix was being carried under fresh new branding at Shoppers Drugmart. In 2015, the brand then expanded to Target in the United States, where the retail giant helped them expand its product line.
“We really leaned in and we spent quite a bit on advertising in that first year at Target and it worked … we were the #3 dermatologist recommended skincare line at Target on year one,” says Gordinier. “It was crazy.”
The following year, Skinfix launched online with Ulta, Sephora’s biggest competitor in the United States. They also went on QVC, which is the TV shopping channel in the U.S. They aired alongside some of the most luxurious beauty brands and were able to go in-depth about the brand’s story and formulations, something that was difficult to do through simple a retail display.
“That really started to catapult us,” says Gordinier. “We were able to do better because we were able to tell our story.”
It was at QVC where they realized that it was time to seek a new distributor, one where potential customers could learn from an advisor/specialist about the product and its benefits.
“We’re just so far ahead of the curve. It needs so much explanation and education,” says Gordinier. “It’s so new and it needs early adopters and it needs beauty advisors in-stores to support the sale.”
And the retailer that specializes in that type of experience was Sephora, one of the biggest beauty retailers in North America.
In 2019, Skinfix officially launched in Sephora, with products such as its best-selling Barrier+ Triple Lipid-Peptide Face Cream, its Barrier+ Foaming Oil Cleanser, its Resurface+ AHA Renewing Body Cream and many others. All of its products still follow Thomas Dixon’s philosophy from 150 years ago: Use powerful natural active ingredients to create a healthy skin barrier.
Since its launch, Skinfix has become one of Sephora’s biggest selling skincare brands.
“We teeter between the #3 and #4 moisturizer overall in the United States and Canada, which is their largest beauty category in the whole store. That is huge. Then we have [products] that are in the top-five in each of their categories,” says Gordinier.
“We’re in a really fortunate position in that we have the right product at the right time and definitely at the right place. Sephora is the best partner we could have now. They’re incredibly supportive of indie brands.”
Operating Out Of Atlantic Canada
Skinfix is headquartered in Halifax, where eight members of its team are based. The company did have an office but decided to go completely remote when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. But even before that, remote work was a big part of Skinfix’s culture.
“The bulk of our stores and our business are in the U.S., so we have to hire people that have experience with training and education and in-store sales and you need people on the ground in local markets,” says Gordinier. “We’ve ended up hiring across both countries remotely.”
But Gordinier says there are lots of talented people in the region too whose skills can translate across different industries.
We got the talent, we got the brain pool. We got people like our operations team that have come from other industries,” she says. “We have regulatory folks from the beer industry. We got ops people that worked in different manufacturing spaces. It’s all the same skills, just transferred to a new widget.”
After a very successful year, Gordinier says Skinfix is focused on continuing its explosive growth at Sephora.
“Right now it’s all about continuing to build this brand with Sephora,” she says. “Our growth right now is 600 percent versus a year ago. We’re exploding, so we’re just focused on that.”
With more consumer products companies cropping up in Nova Scotia all the time, Gordinier hopes Skinfix can serve as an example that an Atlantic Canadian company can compete on an international level.
“Why can’t a company based in Nova Scotia be a player in the beauty industry? Why can’t those skills be taught or learned from other industries and be here?” she says. “I think it’s really cool, exciting, and fun.”