Bobbi Brown on Three Years of Jones Road
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Three years and tens of millions of dollars later, Jones Road, the beauty brand founded by Bobbi Brown, is still just getting started.
Makeup-artist-turned-entrepreneur Bobbi Brown is celebrating three years with a new kit of Brown’s favorite products, dubbed the Bobbi 3.0 Kit, as well as two embroidered sweaters in collaboration with Lingua Franca. The former debuts Thursday on Jones Road’s website and in stores for $82. The Lingua Franca collaboration, available in two slogans — “I Am Me” and “What If” — will sell at Jones Road retail stores before rolling out on Lingua Franca’s website Nov. 2 for $135 on a made-to-order basis. A third sweater, donning the phrase “Beauty Reinvented,” will also be available on Lingua Franca’s website on a made-to-order basis.
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The brand is on a steep upward trajectory, according to industry sources, who expect sales to top $120 million this year — double 2022’s revenues.
“We had such crazy growth last year,” said Cody Plofker, both the brand’s chief marketing officer and Brown’s son. “This year has felt like a catch-up year — building out operations to build and sustain that growth.”
The vision is to have the brand present in its own channels predominantly, such as direct-to-consumer and its own brick-and-mortar doors. “It’s all about reach. There are so many people that are just discovering Jones Road,” Brown said. “We have just hit the surface of what’s even possible, and reach means different things to different people.”
The brand’s wholesale partnership stands at one counter in Liberty London. Though it had also launched in Credo Beauty last year, the brand ended that partnership to double down on its own brick-and-mortar stores.
“We have no other plans for [wholesale] retail at all,” Brown said. “But for our own retail, we do have some plans.”
Plofker posited that the high-touch approach to retail has been serving the brand well. “That’s something that has made the stores really, really successful. From what we’re seeing on social, people have such a great experience, and that’s important to us. You don’t necessarily get that going into a wholesaler, but we’re able to control the entire aesthetic and customer experience better with our stores.”
More stores in key markets are in the works, and while no plans are solid, the duo mentioned Brooklyn, Chicago and California as potential markets to enter. “We do things our way, and we didn’t want somebody coming in here, telling us we had to go into wholesale,” Plofker said. “It allows us and Bobbi to be more in charge of the direction of the company.”
Part of doing things her way, Brown said, is hiring a team that is new to the beauty category. “I know exactly what not to do, and what not to waste time and energy on,” she said, adding that that includes “a lot of meetings, infrastructure, a lot of layers.”
“Anyone that comes, I don’t care how experienced you are. We don’t hire tons of very experienced people, besides me,” Brown continued. “Our creative director is 26 years old and went to high school with Cody’s younger brother, and our shoots are so cool. We shoot them in our studio here, I do the styling, we have a wardrobe closet, I do the makeup. It’s homegrown.”
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