Boulevard Spotlight: Heyday Skincare

Discover how the brand has emerged from a crowded vertical by committing to its customers

At Boulevard, we’re fortunate to work with some of the most innovative and exciting brands in the beauty business. They inspire us, and by sharing their stories, we believe they’ll inspire you. Look for more about our partners in future Boulevard Spotlights.

Heyday Skincare, with locations in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Washington DC, has flourished by staying true to the customer-centric vision at the heart of its business. With 10 stores (for now), the brand recently secured $20.5 million in Series B funding, bringing total funding to date to over $30 million. Heyday’s success is the product of a clear vision — customer-forward skincare — combined with the right mechanisms to deliver that vision at scale.

Skincare is a blend of art and science, and many brands provide personalized care by giving clients specific directions to be followed precisely. The value to the customer is the clinical expertise of the brand, trusted to provide whatever’s necessary to achieve the desired result. While many customers are happy with this simplified approach, it leaves them at somewhat of a loss. Should they choose to switch brands or pursue other skincare options, they have to start over with a brand new set of experts.

Heyday takes a different approach to its personalized skincare, making customers partners in their own self-care. Heyday’s site tells visitors they want to “teach you about your unique skin,” because they “believe in education first.” They make the science of skincare approachable, and even fun. The charmingly-named  “Camp Heyday” includes sections like “Ask an Expert” and “Routine 101,” creating opportunities for clients to gain deeper understanding of their particular needs and goals. A customer with the vocabulary to describe their skincare priorities to one of Heyday’s experts is more likely to be satisfied with their recommendations.

There are no proprietary formulas at Heyday because if your customer is forced to buy their skincare products from your store, you haven’t empowered them at all. Heyday doesn’t create, it curates. Directions on skincare product packaging are over-simplified out of necessity; there’s only so much room on a bottle or box. Co-founders Adam Ross and Michael Pollack believe the product itself matters less than the wisdom of knowing how and when to use it. Heyday’s team of estheticians share that knowledge with customers, so they can make informed choices about their self-care. Give a client a moisturizer and you help them for a day, but teach them about a moisturizer...well, you get the idea. 

Heyday’s customer-forward approach is also behind the gender-neutral design of its brick and mortar locations. Skincare is strongly associated with beauty — feminine beauty, specifically — but Heyday wants to invite everyone to care for their skin. The color story of Heyday’s original locations was more in keeping with traditional, feminine skincare; lovely, but not inviting to all customers. Newer locations have embraced a more inclusive design aesthetic, because after all, skincare is a kind of self-care that’s good for everybody. 

Heyday’s skincare ethos is all about using the right products to suit a specific need, a philosophy that extends to their hiring practices. The company recently hired Sean Bock, Drybar’s former vice president of franchising and licensing, to head up their own franchising efforts. Given that part of Heyday’s original vision was to bring the facial out of the spa in much the same way that Drybar brought the blowout out of the salon, Bock is the perfect choice to help shape the brand’s future.

“We take skincare personally,” proclaims Heyday’s website. Staying true to the vision of providing customers with a personalized shopping and education experience has given the company the edge it needs to stand out in a competitive beauty vertical. Dedicating the right resources at the right time to both the digital and physical arms of the business has Heyday on the path to even greater success. The brand’s website also proclaims the company is “Expanding the future of facials” — which seems to be exactly what Heyday is doing.

To learn more about how partnering with Boulevard helped Heyday support its client-centric strategy, read our case study about them.