Soleil Toujours Readies For Sephora Launch As It Extends To Walmart With New Gen Z Line Summer Camp

Soleil Toujours, a company specializing in multitasking sun care products, is multitasking on the distribution front, too.

After recently extending to the mass market with a new gen Z-oriented line, Summer Camp, that’s exclusive to Walmart for a year as part of the chain’s partnership with Space NK, its signature brand is heightening its prestige presence by entering Sephora in January. The beauty retailer, which is putting Souleil Toujours in around 150 doors, will carry eight of its products, including bestsellers Clean Conscious Antioxidant Sunscreen Mist SPF 50, Clean Conscious Set + Protect Micro Mist SPF 30 and Mineral Ally Daily Defense SPF 50 Tinted Glow.

Valerie McMurray, founder and CEO of Soleil Toujours, describes the Sephora launch as “validation of our concept and where we plan to go.” She says, “Soleil is changing the face of sunscreen. Sunscreen is becoming more prevalent in the skincare space, and our point of view is completely unique, creating products people want to use every day that combine sunscreen with skincare and color. With that combination, the total addressable market is much larger than just sun care.”

McMurray didn’t plan to be a beauty entrepreneur—and her initial forays into the beauty business weren’t auspicious. She earned her MBA from University of Virginia Darden School of Business in 1996 and ventured into the finance world. As a side hobby, she began making swim coverups about 12 years ago and placing them at resorts under the name Mer Soleil. She figured sunscreen would be a nice complement to the swim merchandise.

“To me, mineral sunscreens were really the safest, most effective, most stable sunscreens, but there wasn’t really anything on the market that felt great and didn’t leave that nasty white cast,” she says. “Also, I grew up in the ‘70s, and I remember when my mom always had a tube of Bain de Soleil in her bathroom. There’s a sense of aspiration, glamour and luxury to that brand which I felt didn’t exist in the market.”

McMurray gave sun care a shot by adding five sun care stockkeeping units to Mer Soleil’s collection. Within a week, she says she was sent a cease-and-desist letter from La Mer owner Estée Lauder. She decided to move on from the Mer Soleil brand name, but not sun care. Mer Soleil became Soleil Organique. The change didn’t improve the brand’s fortunes. According to McMurray, it got sued by the state of California because its product formulas weren’t at least 70% organic.

“Soleil is changing the face of sunscreen.”

McMurray didn’t succumb to the challenges. In 2016, she spiffed up the sunscreen formulas with the latest sun care technology and introduced Soleil Toujours. Finally, the name and idea stuck. She proceeded with a distribution strategy that had worked with her swim offerings. She spread Soleil Toujours at high-end hospitality properties like The Peninsula Beverly Bills, Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons and Auberge du Soleil. The properties were primarily a marketing, not a sales volume play.

Retailers caught wind of Soleil Toujours’ reputation and its premium sunscreens that bridged into skincare with ingredients such as peptides, apple stem cells and CoQ10. Net-a-Porter, Space NK, Bluemercury, Dermstore and Revolve picked up the brand. Then, the pandemic hit. About 95% of Soleil Toujours’ revenues at the time were wrapped up in distribution to retailers and hotels suffering from closures related to coronavirus precaution measures, and quarantined consumers weren’t snapping up sunscreen.

Soleil Toujours concentrated on direct-to-consumer distribution to endure the pandemic. It was helped by mounting word of mouth that imbued it with cult status. Something Navy influencer Arielle Charnas has been an important instigator of word of mouth for the brand. She discovered it at Four Seasons Hotel at The Surf Club in Surfside, Fla., and touted it online. Today, a quarter of Soleil Toujour’s sales are from DTC. In its wholesale operations, the brand has expanded internationally to Spain, Germany, Denmark and Mexico, among several countries. Approximately 10% of sales are via distributors.

As the worst of the pandemic has subsided in the United States, Soleil Toujours’ retail and hospitality business has rebounded. The brand estimates sales will climb 300% this year. It received an unexpected retail opportunity from BeautySpaceNK, Walmart’s tie-in with Space NK. Last year, Noah Rosenblatt, president of Space NK for North America, called McMurray, mother of two sons and a daughter, as she was dropping her son off at camp to discuss a possible line for BeautySpaceNK. Summer Camp is that line.

“I want Summer Camp to be the foundation for your healthiest skin.”

“What I want the brand to translate is the ethos of summer camp. My sons went to this camp in Upstate New York called Dudley, and their motto is, ‘The Other Fellow First.’ It’s the concept of being bigger than just yourself. At summer camp, for kids that are fortunate to go to them, they meet friends they’ll have for the rest of their lives, learn to be true to themselves and experience things like camping and archery,” says McMurray. “They build the foundation of who they are, and I want Summer Camp to be the foundation for your healthiest skin.”

On its website, Summer Camp’s assortment contains the products EnviroUV Facial Sunscreen Mist SPF 50, EnviroUV Sheer Sunscreen Mist SPF 30, EnviroUV Sheer Sunscreen Mist SPF 50, Mineral BFF Daily Body Lotion SPF 50, Mineral BFF Daily Face & Lip Sunstick SPF 50, Mineral BFF Daily Face Moisturizer SPF 30, Mineral BFF Sunscreen Spray SPF 50 and Skin SOS Organic Aloe Hydrating Spray. Summer Camp’s prices run mostly from $12 to $21. Soleil Toujours’ prices run from $24 to $68. McMurray forecasts Summer Camp will account for 20% of the overall business over the next few years.

Although Soleil Toujours’ has a broad base of customers aged roughly 20 to 60 years old, its Sephora launch and Summer Camp endeavor are expected to increase its audience of younger customers. McMurray envisions Summer Camp releasing acne products cleaner than acne products that typically target younger consumers. Along with its availability at 250 BeautySpaceNK installations inside Walmart, Summer Camp has a lip product in the retailer’s Beauty Finds selection featuring products $3, $5 or $9 at 1,400 locations.

Another benefit of the Sephora relationship is Soleil Toujours is tapping the retailer’s expertise to guide product development. In the spring, it will unveil a product exclusively for Sephora. As the brand grows its product pipeline, McMurray hints multifunctional products merging sun care with skincare and color cosmetics are a major focus.

Soleil Toujours was initially self-funded. In 2020, it raised a $1.6 million friends and family round. It’s currently in the process of raising a larger round to support growth. Andy Spade, co-founder of the fashion brand Kate Spade New York and branding studio Partners & Spade, has come on board as an investor. There’s been deal activity in the sun care segment lately. Blackstone Growth took a majority stake in Supergoop last year. In 2019, SC Johnson bought Coola and Beiersdorf acquired Coppertone.

“There’s definitely an appetite in the sun care space. In talking to investors, it’s clear that it’s interesting to them,” says McMurray. “I feel like the market is oversaturated with different makeup and skincare brands, but there really aren’t a ton of sun care brands, especially outside of the mass market.”

Feature image credit: Austiin John