Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Angela Ubias. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Angela thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Common Heir, since inception, has had one very clear mission: prove that luxury beauty can be a triple threat: inclusive, high-performance and sustainable by design.

When I connected with. my co-founder Cary, we were perfect strangers and I’d been in beauty, building other peoples brands, for about seven years!! I was growing disenchanted with an industry I adored because there was a total lack of innovation on the formulation, format and design front–everything had the exact same minimalist, color voided aesthetic.

I also realized one day, as I was toiling away on the umpteenth iteration of a formula for another brand, that “hey, they aren’t designing this to be safe and effective for MY skin, why are we all okay just accepting this?” That’s when the wheels really started turning; I could take this massive amount of industry knowledge I’d gained and create formulas that are TRULY safe and effective for all skin tones, types, and textures. I could use all of this training to build something magical that spoke to my very intersectional identity and communities. And that felt really special to me.

Fast forward to connecting with my now co-founder, and I realized we had an opportunity to do even more than that–we could tackle, head-on, sustainability in a way I’d always dreamed of and that’s how Common Heir’s mission was born. “Plastic-free but not granola because I like pretty things” is how I used to describe it in our early days!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Absolutely! I fell into beauty, now close to a decade ago and cut my teeth building other peoples brands. I led product development, operations and growth for one of the original indie beauty labs in North America!

These days, I’ve left that world behind to focus on building Common Heir, which is a luxury skincare brand rooted in legacy, sustainability and efficacy. Outside of the heart and soul of the brand that I think sets us apart, we just really love making beautiful formulas that people are obsessed with and changing ideas around what sustainability can look like!

As the brand has grown and both formulas have won industry awards, I find myself being so proud of the products we’ve created with so much thought and intention. When we get emails with customers raving about how the products have transformed their skin or notes saying that they feel safe using our products because we created them with everyone in mind, or they connect with my journey–it just puts the biggest smile on my face!! That’s definitely what I’m most proud of.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There are probably too many to count! Fundraising, was certainly one of the most challenging times of the business. From the beginning, we knew we didn’t want to bootstrap this forever. I’d left a big, fancy salaried position in the middle of the pandemic, and knew that to make the impact we set-out to, it would require capitol that we just didn’t personally have available.

And being a woman, and a woman in beauty and a woman of color fundraising–I mean to a lot of investors we were super high-risk. And it had nothing to do with skillset or market fit, and had more to do with really archaic optics of who “should be successful” doing this and who “wouldn’t be”. I think people don’t realize fully, that beauty and personal care, is still heavily and has been for ages, dominated by men. So as two women fundraising, even with our vast individual and combined experience, we still got so many “no’s” and “what a fun passion project for you” and “you should consider hiring a man”.

And every time I left those conversations, I only dug my heels in more. I knew that we were building something worthwhile and eventually we found people that understood our mission and turned out to be our biggest advocates!

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I think you have to understand, to the best of your ability the culture you want for your company and stick to that ideology in times when supply chains are blowing up or business is just busier than normal.

Regardless of team size (I’ve grown teams from 2~100+ in my career) what builds and maintains a strong team is really simple.

-Respect–pay people what they’re worth and treat them like human beings
-Lead with integrity–mistakes happen and the blame game is rarely conducive to solution-finding.
-Give credit–nothing keeps morale higher than giving kudos when due and realizing that your business wouldn’t be the success it is without the support of a stellar team!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://commonheir.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/commonheir/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commonheir
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/commonheir
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/common_heir

Image Credits
Photographer Kelsey Fugere (for all product and model photos) Darell Jackson for my headshot