The idea for MERIT was born out of my own experience in the mid-2010s. I was looking for a brand that evoked the feeling of heritage luxury beauty, but prioritized skin safety and created easy-to-use products. At the same time, the beauty industry was getting increasingly single-minded in their pursuit of Gen Z, leaving a gap in the market for a brand that actually considered the needs of consumers in their 30s, 40s, and above.”
Katherine Power is a prolific consumer brand builder. In 2006, along with co-founder Hillary Kerr, she launched Who What Wear. Power launched Versed Skincare in May 2019. He also launched the clean, organic wine brand Avaline with her co-founder and friend, Cameron Diaz. Katherine and long-time investing partner, Dana Settle, have recently launched a special purpose acquisition company, Powered Brands. Settle is a partner and co-founder at Greycroft, a venture capital firm that manages over $2 billion in capital and has invested in all of Power’s brands. Powered Brands is combining best-in-class brands and visionary digital-first leaders, that are rooted in social and environmental responsibility to create a next generation in beauty holding companies. Her companies have collectively raised over $60MM in venture capital and strategic funding from renowned investors and corporations such as Greycroft, Sonoma Brands, Marcy Ventures, LVMH, Albertsons, and Amazon.
Katherine and Hillary Kerr, are also best-selling authors with their nonfiction books Who What Wear: Celebrity and Runway Style for Real Life; What to Wear, Where; and The Career Code.
“In our product ideation and development process, we focus on the needs of a more mature demographic than most of our peers, continues Katherine. “While the industry continues to focus on Gen Z, our primary consumer is in their 30s to 50s. We certainly still connect with younger consumers – beautiful, easy-to-use products and packaging, as it turns out, are universal – but we always take into consideration the life experience and preferences of a more mature audience.
“W men cut the number of products they used in half in the 2020s. Now we’ve returned to normal-ish, routines are staying minimal. In the same way that people aren’t going back to high-waisted jeans on a daily basis, people aren’t going back to a 15-step makeup routine. It’s about being elevated, yet staying comfortable. The Millennial woman is definitely looking to enhance their natural features and I’ve seen that Gen-Z is looking to have more fun and be more daring with their makeup. What they can agree on is clean formulas. Both Gen Z and Millennials have become increasingly mindful of what’s in their makeup bags. MERIT focuses on products free of parabens, sulfates SLS and SLES, phthalates, mineral oils, formaldehyde, and more. They are focusing on great, healthy skin first and looking to make sure their makeup is helping their skin not hurting.”
Toronto-born and New York-based Aila Morin is the founding Senior Vice President. Prior to MERIT, she was DTC Mejuri’s Director of Marketing and GTM. The company has sold over three million pieces of jewelry since it launched in 2015.
MERIT launched in January 2021. “We pride ourselves on creating products with merit. There is so much confusion and noise in the beauty space, so we’re rigorous about our product development + testing process. We only put something out in the world when we know it solves a real problem that people have in their routines and when we feel confident that we’ve perfected it to the best of our ability. From our formulas to our componentry, everything we make is proprietary + custom. This is why it takes us so long to create a new product – for example, our best-selling Great Skin Serum was in development for more than five years before its launch in October 2022.
“The beauty space feels so oversaturated that brands feel the need to push out new products all the time just to keep up with the trend cycle and their competition. In contrast, we take a deliberate, long-term approach. We only want to launch products that will still have a place on your vanity for decades to come.
“When formulating our products, we focus on skin-loving ingredients and use a rigorous set of standards outlined by celebrity facialist Biba de Sousa. Clean is one of our foundational principles. Our range is focused on multi-use beauty and skincare that do as much as possible for you in one product.”
Adds Power: There’s a lot of confusion around what “clean” actually means – and the truth is that there is no one definition. For us, it really starts with ingredients – our products are vegan and cruelty-free, and formulated to be skin-loving with ingredients like plant-based squalane, vitamin B5 and antioxidants included to avoid triggering acne and overloading sensitive skin. We also adhere to the rigorous standards of EU and Clean at Sephora compliance, and partner with Biba de Sousa, a longtime Hollywood-favorite facialist, on our product development. All of our products abide by her famous “no-list”, which includes 73 ingredients “clean” but potentially acne-triggering ingredients (like coconut oil). We aim to eliminate as much virgin plastic as possible from our products and operations, and our shipment packaging is recyclable, reusable, or biodegradable.”
The company partners with Baby2Baby, an organization providing children in poverty across the United States with diapers, clothing, and other basic necessities.
Morin worked the overnight shift at Shopper’s Drug Mart in the Beauty Boutique section to put herself through university before starting her career in marketing. After completing her B.A. in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Magna Cum Laude, Morin became a Director of Marketing at a fashion technology company. She is now the SVP of Growth, Brand, and Innovation at MERIT as well as a formal advisor to Versed, the fastest-growing drug-store skincare brand.
MERIT has been the #1 best-selling clean lip gloss (Shade Slick), clean blush (Flush Balm), and clean foundation stick (The Minimalist) at Sephora. MERIT has been awarded at the 2021 Oprah Daily Beauty Awards, Allure 2021 Best of Beauty Awards (Clean), Cosmopolitan 2021 Holy-Grail Beauty Awards, NewBeauty 2021 Beauty Awards, POPSUGAR Best of the Year, Refinery 2021 Beauty Innovator Awards, WWD The 2021 Beauty Inc. Awards.
“Solo Shadow incorporates nourishing ingredients like peptides, chamomile, calendula, and Magnolia bark extracts. It is also ophthalmologist-tested and approved and safe for sensitive eyes. It Solo Shadow was designed with our core customers in mind – they’re busy, driven, and buy routines rather than trends. Truly great products transcend generations. Our prices sit around 30% lower than traditional luxury beauty. Traditionally, cosmetics and skincare were viewed as two completely separate categories – however, over the last few years, there’s been a significant shift in consumers’ expectations and behaviors. Customers are more educated than ever about the needs and health of their skin, and they’re no longer willing to compromise on ingredients just because something is a “makeup” product.
Concludes Aila Morin: “Winter has always represented a reset – personally, it’s when I want to be moisturized, dewy skin (and one swipe of color to make me look put together. Like all things MERIT, Signature Lip Matte was designed to be both comfortable and easy to wear, with a higher-impact color payoff than some of our prior launches. “
Naming the shapes has been fun. Comments Power: “Power” speaks to the confidence you get from the perfect red and was inspired by our founder; “Antibes,” a gentle peach hue, takes its cues from a resort town in the south of France, and immediately conjures up the feeling of a warm summer evening; and “Equestrian” feels refined yet warm, and evoking the perfect the chestnut-y tone of that shade. It takes us many months and iterations to land on each one, to capture just the right mood.
“Signature Lip Matte is a great example of how we approach product development with a long-term lens. Glossy lips have been trending for the last few years, but a soft matte lip is a generational classic. And it’s no surprise why – lipstick is the easiest way to look polished and put together quickly. “
