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To our readers & users,
This October marks the third birthday of Yours and we’re so humbled and grateful for all your support of our growing startup 🫶
Before my husband and co-founder, Shivam, and I even conceptualized Yours, we were also looking really hard for solutions to our skin problems. As we started exploring the world of skincare, we quickly discovered how confusing, difficult, expensive and wasteful it was—and still is.
So much time wasted on trial-and-error.
So much money spent on the wrong products.
So many bottles untouched at the back of our shelves, just piling on.
So much jargon and contrary opinions on the internet, how do we know which one applies to us?
…And even after all this, our skin problems are still left unsolved.
That’s why we decided to put a stop to this wasteful, frustrating cycle, because our story is your story. Yours takes the guesswork out of skincare, because we do the hard parts—the research and testing—so you can have it easy.
Through building this brand we saw a lot of problems we wanted to solve within the beauty industry when it came to transparency, sustainability, and inclusivity. As South Asians, we saw our faces excluded from advertising and our skin excluded from the formulation process.
By offering a personalized routine based on your specific skin type, skin color, and biggest skin concerns, Yours puts your needs first. Visible results, less unused bottles, and better for the planet. This is self-care that cares.
To celebrate our third birthday, we commissioned this artwork above to share with you some of our achievements and struggles. Like a Taylor Swift song, there’s a lot of hidden meaning behind every element (if you squint, you can see the levels form the number 3!).
Read on if you want to know more 👀
Pre-launch
- Shivam was traveling quite a lot for work and his diet was messed up because of all the fast food which triggered his acne to flare up. We’re smart people, so we thought we could figure it out (right?). But things got complicated. Spreadsheets were involved. Money was wasted. And worst of all—nothing worked. We were left with bottles full of stuff we didn’t want and the same skin issues we began with.
- After extensive research and interviews, I found that so many people had similar struggles too. We were on to something big here. Months were spent deep-diving into the skincare industry, and eventually I finally found the perfect lab to partner with in Switzerland where our cruelty-free, sustainable, and ethical priorities aligned.
- In my research, I discovered that over 120 billion units of packaging are produced globally every year—how can we make our packaging as sustainable as possible? The game changer: Airless Pump Bottles.
Unlike the usual dispensers that make use of tubes or straws to pump products out, an airless pump bottle works with a vacuum mechanism to help you get every last drop of product among many other advantages. Geek out with us here.
2019: A Year of Many Firsts
Towards the end of 2019, we closed our seed round of funding with industry leaders such as Sequoia, Global Founders Capital, Kindred Ventures (Investor in Uber, Coinbase, Clubhouse), and Jay-Z’s Arrive Ventures on board. By December 2019, we formed our founding team and were ready for scale with our flagship products, the personalized Day & Night set 🚀
2020: Productivity amid the Pandemic
For many of us, 2020 was the ultimate curveball. I remember seeing the news of Covid-19 around Lunar New Year and thinking this would pass soon enough—until cases and casualties started rising higher and higher.
The pandemic ushered in the era of virtual meetings and fulfilling orders from our homes since we had to close the office for the team’s safety. The stories of frontline workers made our hearts ache, especially after seeing all the images of their faces red and swollen from wearing masks and PPEs all day. We realized that this was a crucial time to do our part as members of a global community, even in our own little way.
#TheTimeisYours campaign was born out of this period where our users and followers nominated frontline workers to whom we sent skincare products, to soothe and repair their skin. On top of this, we also collaborated with yoga instructors and creators to do a series of Instagram Live sessions to exercise and connect with one another during a time where we felt so isolated.
In spite of all the logistical challenges of working during a pandemic, we still managed to launch our first essential, the Clean Slate Exfoliating Pads, followed closely by our much-loved Sunny Side Up SPF30 Sunscreen Mist, and the Cloud Factory Gentle Foaming Cleanser. We didn’t want to create new products just for the sake of having something new—each of these new additions was consciously made to fill a specific gap in the market. Learn more about them by clicking on the links above.
2021: New Year, New Tech
Some sense of normalcy was coming back in 2021, such as going back to the office in reduced capacities (we’ll take what we can get!)
To round up all our core essentials range, our Bounce Back Nourishing Toner joined the skin squad closely at the beginning of the year.
But our biggest launch in 2021 wasn’t a skincare product—it was taking our proprietary personalization technology to the next level with our new and improved selfie analysis. This was a major win in improving our users’ personalization experience.
Since then, our selfie analysis has been able to decode over 1.2 million different faces, so no matter who you are, we’ve got you covered. We cater to the extremes and all of the in-betweens, because we want to treat everyone as an individual—not a category.
2022: Happy 3rd Birthday to Us!
This brings us to the present. We just launched a new version of the Eye Love You Eye Serum and Patch it Up! Invisible Zit Patches and we have so much more in store for you as the year ends.
Three years passed by in a blink of an eye and we’ve definitely had our fair share of ups and downs, but hearing your stories and seeing your skin transformation reviews make them all worthwhile.
As we move towards the future and personalize your skincare experience even further, I’m so proud to say that we are now truly, well, Yours. Still lots of love, just dropping it from our name.
Thanks for reading all the way till the end (you’re a real one!) Keep your eyes peeled, ‘cause three years is only the beginning of more amazing things to come. We’re just getting started.
Love,
Nav
