Dive Brief:
- Personalized beauty brand Proven has raised $12.2 million in Series A funding led by NewH2 Ventures with participation from existing investors.
- The company plans to use the funding to expand its two brands — Proven Skincare and Noteworthy — and build out its team, according to a press release emailed to Retail Dive.
- Proven has brought in more than $21 million in investments. The company previously raised $6 million in seed funding and another $3 million in Regulation A+ funding, per the release.
Dive Insight:
Proven has grown to bring in more than $30 million in revenue, reached break-even and will be profitable by the end of the year, according to the company.
In just the past year Proven has expanded into the U.K. and Europe, partnered with beauty retailer Sephora, been granted two patents and launched the DTC Noteworthy scent brand which has revenue of $5 million.
Proven built its business model on its ability to craft unique skin care and fragrance products, which are personalized for its customers. Both Proven and Noteworthy — which launched this year — rely on AI technology to customize products for individual customers wanting their own signature skin care or scent.
AI comes into play when potential customers visit the Proven website and take the brand’s three-minute quiz that can determine what products work best for them. An algorithm analyzes millions of factors for customers, including changing seasons, the skin’s tolerance to active ingredients, geographical moves, aging and pregnancy.
Proven was founded in 2017 by Ming Zhao and Amy Yuan, and officially launched two years later after a period of extensive research that to date has drawn from over 4,000 scientific studies and testimonials from more than 20 million people on skin care preferences.
Referred to as the Skin Genome Project, the company’s research has studied over 100,000 individual beauty products and the effectiveness of 20,238 skin care ingredients.
Proven Skincare offers five products: personalized cleaner, day moisturizer, night cream, day eye cream, and night eye cream.
“Since Proven launched in 2019, we have built industry-leading technology that allows us to create personalized beauty products unlike anything ever available to the public, and this new funding allows us to continue our essential work of making personalized skincare and fragrance the standard,” Zhao, who is also Proven’s co-CEO, said in a statement. “I’m often asked why personalization is so important, and the truth is, none of us would use a one-size-fits-all-all medicine to cure the body of an ailment. So if we wouldn’t take that approach to the rest of our body, why should we settle for basic beauty products that aren’t personalized to our unique needs?”
