Why we invested in Sourcerie
Sourcerie has raised a £1.8m pre-seed round, from Playfair, Vorverk Ventures and strategic angels to build the tech platform and personalisation software for consumers’ skincare, haircare, and bodycare needs
How it started
I’ve been a skincare nerd since being diagnosed with adult acne at the age of 21. After seeing a dermatologist, I felt lost and confused navigating an industry full of jargon, pretty packaging and intense marketing campaigns. It’s a space that I’ve always felt, as a consumer, needed revolutionising….
And then we heard of Kristin Cardwell and Alex Beyer through our existing Playfair portfolio founder — Mandeep Singh (thanks for the intro Mandeep 🙏).
We were super impressed with the founding team’s background ranging from Palantir, Function of Beauty, L’Oreal, and Refinery29, to engineering degrees from MIT, Cambridge, and Oxford, plus extensive experience in tech, beauty and scaling venture-backed businesses. Coupled with their passion for the space, we knew these are the founders to disrupt the status quo in beauty by helping consumers and suppliers apply objective, data-driven decision-making to their personal care needs.
The beauty industry is failing its consumers
Within the booming global beauty industry, skincare is a megatrend. Searchs for the term on Google have increased 350% over the past 5 years, likely due to its association with health and wellness. Today, 20% of people buy several skincare products each month and skin conditions are among the top 10 causes for GP visits.
There over 25,000 global skincare brands trying to tap into this major market. But that isn’t great news for consumers. Unless consumers’ pay for the services of experts or dermatologists, they’re left to educate themselves through brands’ marketing teams or influencers, who are financially motivated to recommend certain products. As a result, consumer are making high-risk, high-intent decisions alone.
The result: a consumer overwhelmed by choice and information.
Sourcerie’s solution
Sourcerie is first building a personalised shopping marketplace between consumers, retailers, and brands where consumers can access personalised recommendations based on customer feedback and machine learning. Powered by datasets and recommendation algorithms, this level of personalisation in the beauty industry is a gamechanger, enabling consumers to make informed decisions that have never before been available to them without the expensive services of a specialist.
Sourcerie will partner with trusted brands, retailers, and distributors to offer a wide variety of products. Brands will receive relevant data about customers and data insights from Sourcerie, which they could not receive from other sellers, to continue improving their products for consumers.
Our investment thesis
Sourcerie’s beachhead market — the global skincare market — is expected to grow at 5.2% CAGR over the next 5 years to reach $189B by 2025. Their secondary market — the haircare market — will reach $105B in the same period.
Sourcerie is entering the market at exactly the right moment. Buying skincare online was jumpstarted by the pandemic and is becoming increasingly normal, especially among younger consumers. ‘Personalisation’ — matching products that are right for the individual — is a key trend.
At the same time, brands’ customer acquisition costs have risen dramatically since Facebook and Google ad costs doubled in 2021. Those tens of thousands of brands are struggling to differentiate themselves to consumers at a reasonable price. It is increasingly difficult for them to cut through the noise via online advertising channels.
And finally, D2C brands own and collect their data, but when they sell through partners or resellers, they lose data oversight. They receive little data about their consumers, and what they do receive is largely qualitative. Sourcerie is data-first. The insights on consumer behaviour and spending habits it can offer brands is invaluable.
Sourcerie’s founders have a strong data and tech advantage that many founders in the beauty industry lack. This is a compelling proposition for brands who cannot access similar data elsewhere, and for consumers, for whom this level of personalisation is unrivalled.
What’s next
Sourcerie have officially launched their marketplace and will be working closely with brands to help them service their customers.
We’re super excited to support Kristin and Alex in their next phase of growth
A personal note
If you’re a founder at the very earliest stages of building your company, you can pitch the Playfair team here. You can follow the Playfair team on LinkedIn, Twitter, Forbes, Vimeo and here on Medium.
