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Sporty Rich, the fast-growing lifestyle and activewear label founded by Emily Oberg, is getting into the beauty game as it targets $75 million in sales by 2025.
On 20 September, the brand — which in four years has grown from an Instagram account to a $30 million business selling easy-wearing separates with a retro sportswear vibe — will launch five skincare products: a milk cleanser ($40), multi-vitamin face mist ($40), multi-purpose balm ($30), body oil ($48) and hand cream ($28).
To begin, beauty will be sold exclusively on Sporty Rich’s e-commerce site and via its newly opened flagship store in New York, before eventually extending to a select group of retail partners. More skincare products, such as lip gloss and sunscreen, could follow in the future, but colour cosmetics won’t be on the cards. “I don’t wear makeup myself and I only make products that are true to me and my lifestyle,” Oberg tells Vogue Business.
Most important is ensuring the products are “easy for anyone to use”, regardless of their skin type, she says. “Sporty Rich is about wellness and wellbeing. Personal care and skincare felt like a natural extension of the brand.” She adds: “I wanted the products to be ones that people generally aren’t loyal to or specific about. We all have a favourite moisturiser, for example, but I felt like these products are ones that people can easily add to their existing routine.”
Sporty Rich will be competing in a nearly $500 billion global beauty sector that has become increasingly tough to crack. Advertising costs are skyrocketing and digitally savvy consumers who can access beauty at their fingertips are less loyal. The barriers to entry are low, making the space extremely crowded as more influencers including Chriselle Lim and Susan Yara; celebrities such as Harry Styles and Hailey Bieber; and makeup artists like Isamaya Ffrench and Fara Homidi come to market with their own brands.
Oberg is betting on the brand’s community of die-hard fans to drive beauty sales. “It’s the simple fact that it’s Sporty Rich. I always say that we don’t sell products — we sell a lifestyle, a world that people want to buy into and be part of. That product could be anything but people want it because of the world around the brand that we have created.” She continues: “All human beings have a deep and essential need to feel a sense of belonging and connection. It was always my goal to create this and I think we’ve succeeded.”
The ‘white T-shirt’ of beauty
A personal diagnosis was also the foundation for the category expansion: in her mid-20s, Oberg learned that she had an autoimmune disease, prompting her to focus on healing her symptoms and restoring her health. Oberg says Sporty Rich’s beauty products embody a balanced and clean approach to healthy living. That may resonate with young millennials and Gen Z, who are increasingly decluttering their beauty cabinets and opting for simpler, less wasteful routines.
“The beauty market has become so competitive and there are a million brands out there. It’s confusing,” says Oberg. “Our products are straightforward and don’t have a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce and don’t understand what they do. I wanted to make a line that was the white T-shirt version of beauty; anyone can use it, it doesn’t have crazy active ingredients that typically ruin people’s skin, and the products do what they claim to do.”
Oberg, who has 337,000 Instagram followers and built her career at Complex Media and Kith, launched Sporty Rich in 2019, selling stylish but not groundbreaking separates, such as T-shirts, joggers, skirts, tops and accessories that reflected her interest in fashion and design from the 1980s and 1990s. Some pieces felt more like merch, featuring the brand name or catchy phrases like “health is wealth”. The nostalgia resonated with an audience of 20-something-year-old consumers and celebrities including models Hailey Bieber, Lori Harvey and Elsa Hosk, who are often spotted wearing pieces from the brand.
Today, Sporty Rich employs 30 people based in Paris and is profitable. In July, the brand opened its first flagship store in New York on Soho’s Greene Street, with a view to growing direct sales. E-commerce currently accounts for 25 per cent of revenues, while wholesale brings in 75 per cent. Oberg says the business overall is on track to achieve 30 per cent sales growth in 2023, and forecasts an increase of 60-100 per cent in 2024.
Capturing the beauty customer
In addition to clothing, Sporty Rich has been expanding into wellness. Earlier this year, Oberg published the Sporty Rich Wellness Book, a coffee-table book containing 240 pages of interviews, essays and photography on health, skin, nutrition and fitness. There’s also Oberg’s wellness platform called Sporty Rich Wellness Club, which features guides on everything ranging from electrolytes to omega-3 fatty acids and lymphatic drainage massages. Its dedicated Instagram account has over 60,300 followers. The core brand has over 500,000.
However, expanding into beauty requires a different approach to apparel. Oberg says she has relied on a new hire — a Parisian woman with more than 20 years of experience in skincare, who “knows the luxury beauty world inside and out” — to support with factory sourcing and product development and essentially oversee the process from start to finish. She also hired a US-based consultant, who played a key role in launching disruptive beauty brands like Glossier, to help advise on formulation, ingredients, storytelling and marketing.
To advertise the launch, Sporty Rich plans to use a mix of channels including more traditional formats like billboards and press coverage as well as digital marketing across Instagram and TikTok. “We plan to do social content on both [platforms] and work with key influencers who we feel are representative of the brand and beauty line. We also created a ton of assets ourselves, all of which were directed by me as all our imagery is,” Oberg says.
Whether Sporty Rich expands into more product categories will hinge on its ability to retain customers, explains Oberg. She’s watching to see whether people will buy the launch items and like it enough to purchase it again after they’ve run out. For now, she is hopeful the brand’s fans will understand and appreciate her back-to-basics vision. “This is my essential skincare no matter the season. It’s genderless, seasonless and safe for all skin types.”
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