Sophia Lucina— Hi, I’m so stoked to have you all here. I’ve been loving your brand for a minute now. So, give me the rundown.
Stephen Yaseen— Yeah, well I’ve always been super into skincare, and on the beauty side, one of my first favorite products was this tinted sunscreen. It kind of introduced me to the idea of having a beauty product that also acted as a skincare item, something with immediate payoff. That was my conduit into me realizing that beauty doesn’t need to be reserved for a subset of people.
Jon Wormser— I’ve always been one to experiment with beauty products, which meant stealing products from my mom’s makeup … I was always wearing things incorrectly [laughs]. But that led me into this world we’ve built where beauty doesn’t need to fit the heavily pigmented, complicated product … something that doesn’t require a bunch of tools to use. Good Weird was founded out of frustration with the current product offering.
Evan Mock— For me, my earliest memory of using beauty products has to be when I was growing up in Hawaii and applying Shiseido sunscreen before going surfing and being on the beach.
SL— I think one thing that immediately stands out to me about you guys is how you’ve infused pop culture into your brand approach. What’s that been like for you?
JW— Well, obviously when we’re serving consumers like Gen-Z, it would be remiss to leave out pop culture. I think some people might see our branding and ask, “Why are there skateboards and surfboards?” ... for me, that’s the antithesis of mainstream, we wanted to emphasize that Good Weird is all about embracing your own shit, not letting societal structures and norms set expectations for what you should do.
SL— For sure. I can tell you bring in a certain crowd of people, and it’s dope. If you could tell me, what was the first idea you had for Good Weird?
SY— Yeah, so we wanted to go forward with this idea of minimizing the footprint of a product by combining a bunch of steps together, so it’s the concept of infusing skincare and low-pigment beauty, for a “beauty routine in a bottle”. Operationally, that concept didn’t actually work at first, so we ended up focusing on the “white space” in the beauty world, for people who are curious about entering a world that might not feel so welcoming.
JW— And that’s been the fun part for Stephen and I. We’ve gotten to experiment with how much pigment goes into a product, how much of a serum goes into a product. We’ll chat like “Well, I didn’t see much of [blank] at the store,” or “I like [blank] concealer, but it’s really intense,” and be able to share our ideas towards creating something new. We really jive when it comes to product development.