Exponent Beauty, which hit the market in April 2022, is working with creators in its own way — by bringing them in as investors. Sara and Erin Foster have been investors since the brand launched, preceding even the official launch of their early-stage fund, Oversubscribed Ventures. Now, Exponent Beauty is announcing longtime fashion influencer Rocky Barnes as its latest investor, Glossy can exclusively confirm. Barnes has 3.4 million followers on Instagram. The amounts of the investments have not been disclosed.
Exponent Beauty differentiates itself from other skin care with a focus on ingredient freshness. Active ingredients in powder form, such as retinol or vitamin C, are mixed by the end user into a hyaluronic acid base and blended together. At launch, founder Liz Whitman called it “self-activated skin care.”
Of the decision to invest, Barnes said, “In my industry, I’m constantly being connected to new brands and introduced to things. …… When I [learned about] Exponent, [I thought] it was shocking that no one has done this sooner. It’s a genius idea. Everyone is investing so much money in beauty products, [while] everything is losing [its efficacy] or degrading consistently after it’s exposed to oxygen and sun. People don’t realize their products [hold] a fraction of their potency after a while,” she said.
Barnes and her husband are active investors — they made investments in “around 12” companies last year, she said, which spanned categories including real estate, tech, and alcohol. Of growing an investment portfolio, Barnes said, “I’ve been doing social media, influencing for close to 15 years. At a certain point, after having a family and having done this for so long, you want to see yourself grow outside of your own image.”
Whitman began raising capital for Exponent before it launched. “The first phase was validating that [existing, competing] clinical skin-care brands actually degrade, working on a prototype for a product that could solve for this, and then doing clinical testing on our formulations,” she said, noting that all of the brand’s packaging had to be designed from scratch. “The [investment] round was constructed very specifically to have the lion’s share taken up by venture funds, but always with this allocation room left over for strategic angels,” said Whitman. At the time, that was where the Foster sisters came in — they’d met Whitman through Founders Fund, one of Exponent’s investors. They joined in early, advising Whitman on the brand’s color scheme and serving as early product testers, for example. If the brand sells, they will make a profit, as will Barnes.
This is, of course, a mutually beneficial arrangement. Exponent, which has 20,000 Instagram followers, benefits from these creators’ talking about its products and helping raise brand awareness. Sara Foster has 773,000 Instagram followers and Erin Foster has 661,000. The sisters also featured Whitman on an episode of their Oversubscribed podcast, which they have done with the founder of every company they have invested in. In addition, they have hosted Zoom events to help introduce beauty media to the brand.
As of October 2024, Exponent is now at Credo Beauty, where Whitman said she recently had a customer tell her she’d heard her episode of the Oversubscribed podcast. When the Foster sisters talk about the brand, it typically sees a 3x spike in sales, Whitman said. It has been growing at the “clean” beauty retailer, too — its Power Serums collection was the largest skin-care brand launch at Credo of 2024, based on sales, and its Brightening Boost Vitamin C is now the fifth bestselling serum at the retailer, Whitman reported.
As Barnes adds the brand to her portfolio, future collaborations are under consideration. “We’re just starting our partnership, but I’m [looking forward to] being able to give input on new products coming out. I’m like, ‘We need a hand product.’ There are things I want out in the market that I’m not seeing,” she said. “Bringing that insight to a brand and being able to collaborate on that level is really fun and exciting.”
According to Whitman, the partnership is not just about follower counts. “The other thing is that [Rocky] represents a very important part of our target consumer: the super-busy working mother. She’s got two young kids — she talks about that a lot — and that’s a huge overlap with our [customer] base.”
Ultimately, an equity-for-investment exchange allows more flexibility, too, Whitman said, suggesting that additional influential investors, like Barnes and the Foster sisters, will be signed on. “Unlike these pay-to-play relationships, where you have contractual deliverables, … this is an alignment of incentives for the long term. It’s not a contractual period. Whether it takes a year, five years or 10 years, they want to see [Exponent] succeed and have a great outcome, as well.”
