Peruse Amazon’s bestsellers for personal care categories and you’ll find the usual drugstore brands like Olay, Dove and Eos, with body washes under $5. But conspicuous in the top rankings is the premium brand Salt & Stone, whose $20 deodorant and $36 body wash consistently top the categories’ rankings.
For most beauty brands, success usually comes with a choice: Dominate the world of premium retail through Sephora, or win in the mass marketplace that is increasingly led by Amazon. Very few on the prestige end of the spectrum have managed to do both. Then came Salt & Stone.
“We’re quite proud of being the best-selling deodorant on the platform,” said founder Nima Jalali of Amazon, where the brand’s body wash was number one in the category on Prime Day. “If you look at what the top 20 bestsellers are around us, everything is mass-market.”
Also a top seller in prestige retailers like Sephora and Nordstrom, the fragrance-forward body-care label is projected to hit $140 million in revenue by the end of 2025, the brand told The Business of Beauty. Its growth has stemmed from its ability to simultaneously become a chic, minimalist bathroom trophy of Millennial shoppers and an Amazon algorithm darling.
With a private equity investor that was secured through one of beauty’s top M&A bankers, the industry is eyeing the brand’s acquisition potential. But its longer-term success will depend on whether it can keep up momentum even as the tailwind from a fragrance frenzy softens and body-care competition increases.
From Snowboards to Shower Routines
Salt & Stone’s roots trace back to Jalali’s former career as a pro snowboarder, where he learned about marketing through sponsorships and brand-building as the co-founder of two snowboarding gear companies — goggles label Ashbury in 2007 and gloves brand Howl Supply in 2014 (which has since expanded to other categories) — before a knee injury ended his career and changed his life.
“I got super into health and wellness,” said Jalali, who went through surgery and sought out answers in the holistic health world. “I really started to care about what I was putting in my body, and just wanted to recover as fast as possible.”
In the midst of his wellness journey, he decided that aluminium-free deodorants at health foods-type stores were not cutting it in terms of branding, scent or efficacy for an athlete’s lifestyle.
“If you found something that worked, rarely would it smell the way I wanted to smell.” he said. “The design of the product would always leave something to be desired.”
The brand was first launched with its deodorant in 2017 to appeal to active, wellness-minded consumers, emphasising a sophisticated alternative to the crunchier brands driving the aluminium-free fad. While design was always part of it, early products and branding leaned sportier. There was a pocket-sized sunscreen stick that could be brought on the mountain, which is now discontinued. The brand now leans more heavily into a fragrance-driven, design-first body-care identity, launching body sprays in 2024.
“It wasn’t meant to be outdoorsy. It was meant to be for everybody,” said Jalali. “The real big moment was when we expanded to more fragrances. That was when we started to really take off.”
A Body Brand Finds Its Fragrance Footing
Salt & Stone reached a true inflection point in 2023, when it entered Sephora as body care was exploding in the beauty market. While Sol de Janeiro’s rainbow-hued assortment of tropical and gourmand body sprays resonated with Gen Zalpha, Millennials sought to invest in products that signalled taste without crossing into exorbitant luxury.
“Millennials are our biggest demo,” Jalali said, noting that the brand avoids gourmand scents in favour of nature-inspired, spa-like fragrances like bergamot. “We like to think of ourselves as the brand you graduate to as you get older,” Jalali added. Creative team member hires have resumés filled with popular Millennial brands. Its chief marketing officer Abby Tonkin hails from Glossier, while other staff have come from Reformation and Le Labo.
Sephora is its biggest sales channel, and the brand is brought up frequently online as a “dupe” to more expensive products. Its Santal & Vetiver scent is compared to Le Labo’s Santal 33 in countless influencer videos.
“It’s as if Bath & Body Works, Le Labo and Aesop came together,” said Alexis Androulakis, one half of the creator duo known as the Lipstick Lesbians, in a TikTok video about the brand. “You’re buying this if you love Le Labo’s scent profiles.”
The brand’s DTC sales have increased 60 percent in the six-month time period ending in October, according to Consumer Edge, the fourth-highest growth rate in beauty for the time period.
“Fragrance-focused direct-to-consumer beauty brands stood out, especially among Gen Z and Millennial shoppers,” said Michael Gunther, vice president and head of insights at Consumer Edge. Pricier rival Aesop was “down a few percent” on DTC during the same time period, based on the credit cards tracked by the firm.
While the brand has been hyped up by celebrities like Irina Shayk and Emma Roberts organically, and works with both celebrities and influencers like Jasmine Tookes and Bethenny Frankel for paid content, Instagram and Google ads have been a bigger priority than influencer marketing, said Jalali.
Mapping Salt & Stone’s Exit Route
Salt & Stone’s 2024 investment from consumer-focused private equity firm Humble Growth has sparked speculation about its prospects for acquisition. So has its work with Vennette Ho of Raymond James, one of beauty’s most influential M&A bankers, known for presiding over sales including Dr. Squatch to Unilever and Dr. Dennis Gross to Shiseido.
Body care’s popularity has made it a hot category for acquisition in recent years after the staggering success of L’Occitane-owned Sol de Janeiro. Premium body spray-forward brands have also interested buyers as Phlur was purchased by TSG earlier this year. But as more labels flood the “elevated body care” space, the fragrance frenzy appears to finally be cooling down, according to recent earnings reports.
To differentiate itself, the brand will continue to push into new categories and fragrances, said Jalali, and is expanding internationally with a recent Space NK launch. Deodorant is still the hero product with 40 percent of the brand’s sales, followed by body wash and body spray at 20 percent each. It has also leaned into fashion collaborations reflecting above-masstige positioning with labels like LA-based, Americana-inspired brand Cherry and the elevated fast-fashion label Aritzia. And it still references its sports and wellness origins through campaigns like a smoothie collab with Erewhon, where it’s the best-selling body-care brand, or a campaign featuring athletes such as golfer Charley Hull and basketball player Jerami Grant.
The brand is currently not in any M&A talks at the moment, said Jalali.
“We’ve been profitable since day one,” he said. “We’re just heads down building the brand and focused on growing in the right way.”
Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.