Ancora Holdings Shutters Vapour Beauty And Taos AER

Vapour Beauty is the latest brand to call it quits.

The groundbreaking clean cosmetics and skincare brand announced it will end operations via email and social media. A poetic social media message posted three days ago informing customers and followers about the closure read, “While the night comes sooner than we wish, it leaves us with a chance to sit in the quiet. The birds have flown off, the insects have gone and each breath fills our lungs with crisp air.”

Taos AER, which began as an extension of Vapour in 2017 and was spun out as a separate deodorant brand in 2020, is also closing. Taos AER’s products are currently 50% off on its website. On Vapour’s site, the brand details that its products will be sold at 50% off in a final sale and orders have to be placed by Dec. 26. It’s releasing a “special launch” it had planned for 2023 along with new bundles and deals throughout the month.

The brand wrote, “We are proud of the products and ethos we created as one of the original and purest of the indie clean beauty brands. Many of you have been enthusiastically with us from the beginning in 2009, and we happily welcomed more of you along the way. This has been a journey of creative passion, great adventure and we have been changed by the power of dreams, risk, and the sincere belief in standing for positive change.”

Shedding light on the closures, Lori Perella Krebs, former president of Frédéric Fekkai & Co. and principal at Ancora Holdings, an investment firm that backed Vapour in 2018, says, “Unfortunately, the landscape has changed dramatically in recent times and scaling a business requires much more capital than it did five years ago. With the path uncertain, we made the difficult decision to close both Vapour Beauty and Taos AER. [Vapour co-founders] Kristine Keheley and Krysia Boinis are the true pioneers of clean beauty and know better than anyone what it takes to create a beautiful, clean brand.”

She continues, “As much as we believe in these brands and what they stand for, producing products at our Taos, N.M. factory and recent supply chain hurdles have made it challenging to stay competitive in such a demanding category. Ancora remains steadfast in pushing the boundaries of clean beauty and will be funneling resources and focusing efforts on scaling Indie Lee, a brand that is poised to bring new innovations in 2023 and onward.”

Vapour co-founder Kristine Keheley

Angela Dubia, founder and CEO of Safe & Chic, a clean beauty e-tailer carrying Vapour, is surprised and saddened by the brand’s closure. She says, “Vapour is an industry-leading nontoxic clean beauty line that helped revolutionize luxury cosmetics. Vapour Beauty has been one of our customer favorites since we started offering safe beauty products at safeandchic.com in 2015. I will especially miss some of my personal favorite blushes and makeup brushes.”

Since clean makeup has become mainstream, Vapour has had to contend with a crowded array of competitors such as Kosas, Westman Atelier, Merit, Saie, Jones Road Beauty and Victoria Beckham Beauty. Struggling amid fierce competition and the escalated costs of doing business, several beauty brands have shuttered lately. Prior to Vapour, the clean cosmetics brands Lilah. B, Vesca Beauty and Bite Beauty revealed their closures.

Erin Orden, CEO of beauty retail agency Orden Beauty, says Vapour arrived “at a time when a clean, gorgeous, affordable brand that offered a full collection of color didn’t really exist.” Today, however, she says there are “too many brands doing the same thing and not enough innovation to change the broken system of sell, sell, sell…The requirements of the beauty industry to sell-through for retailers is immense, and Amazon as well as DTC budgets can be in the millions.”

Keheley and Boinis set out to establish a brand that elevated natural cosmetics beyond what they were finding in natural food stores. Vapour introduced formulas comprised of 70% botanicals certified organic by the United States Department of Agriculture, and 30% minerals and vitamins.

“Unfortunately, the landscape has changed dramatically in recent times and scaling a business requires much more capital than it did five years ago.”

Keheley lived in Europe throughout her childhood. In college, she studied classical archaeology and art history. According to a biography on her personal site, Keheley moved to Taos in 1989 to focus on painting. As a painter, she’s participated in well over 20 exhibitions.

A former set designer, Boinis, who was born in Washington, D.C., moved to Taos in 1995 and began making soap and candles, a business that would evolve into a private-label skincare enterprise Plenish. In 2005, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, a development that transformed her outlook and career trajectory.

In a profile on Taos promotional site Taos.org, she said, “Everything I ingested, slathered on my skin or came in contact with became ‘medicine.’ I sought out treatments, activities, foods, herbs, and ideas to heal, detoxify and balance my body, mind, emotions and spirit. I faced my own mortality and my connection to the whole.” In 2008, Boinis’s cancer returned, and she faced another battle with the disease as she and Keheley were readying Vapour for market.

“Vapour has equal or better performance than chemically based, often toxic, conventional counterparts,” Krysia told Taos.org. “Women deserve a healthy option when it comes to cosmetics. Vapour provides that.”

Vapour co-founder Krysia Boinis

Vapour was known for makeup, particularly in stick form, including its Luminous Foundation, Lux Conditioning Tint and Aura Multistick, but branched into skincare, too. The brand largely distributed to clean beauty retailers, prestige beauty retailers and premium beauty e-tailers the likes of Credo, Neiman Marcus, Dermstore, SkinStore, The Detox Market and Nordstrom.

In 2015, it swerved from its high-end distribution to unveil a limited-edition collection of 12 shades for Target. The big-box chain was looking to build its clean beauty selection. Across its entire line, Vapour had 150 products in 2015. Discussing the Target collection with Taos News, Boinis said, “We thought it was a really interesting opportunity to reach a whole new demographic and increase brand awareness.”

In 2019, a year after Ancora invested in Vapour, the brand was revamped to update formulations and bring it in line with shifting design preferences. A year after that, Taos AER entered Target as a distinct brand. Outside of Target, it was available at Credo, The Detox Market, Poosh and Nordstrom. Talking about Taos AER with Beauty Independent in 2020, Keheley said, “Particularly now that conventional retailers understand the importance of clean, personal care can cast a much wider net.”