We recently connected with Lauren Rome Marks and have shared our conversation below.
Lauren, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Romer is a small mission-driven business. This doesn’t just mean supporting causes we care about; it is embedded in every decision throughout our supply chain including all of our relationships. We call our movement Slow Beauty. We craft products the right way, and we’re all about minimalism or skinimalism. How can we get better results with less. Less money. Less products. Less waste. As a business owner, I get to choose who I work with – partners, vendors and suppliers. And we rigorously evaluate all of them. We want them to feel the same way we do about their own impact with their businesses. We also became carbon-neutral, plastic-neutral, and water-neutral by investing in offset projects through the Impact Collective. On top of that, we joined the 1% for the planet movement and give a portion of all sales to causes that help the world around us.
Lauren, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
After 10 years in a high stress environment, I found my skin at its breaking point. I embarked on a mission to create a solution to achieve better skin. I left my career on Wall Street and spent a year of research and education with industry experts. I poured over every single ingredient and tested many iterations of products with chemists. Enter Romer Skincare – a clean and sustainable skin care line made to simply your routine regardless of gender or skin type. Romer is Dermatologist-Tested, Leaping Bunny Certified, and Carbon-Neutral. The collection includes a Cleanser, Moisturizer, and Treatment mask, incorporating ethically sourced botanicals, oils and extracts that replenish, calm and control the skin. Bye bye bathrooms overflowing with products. Hello simple products that work!
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
I’ve found that it’s been so helpful to step out and meet our customers. Behind every brand and the products is the team who created them, so I have spent lots of time making sure our customers know who I am as the Founder and why I built the products in the first place. Whether it’s answering skin care or ingredient questions or just sharing my own skin care journey, I love connecting with our community. Human connection builds brand loyalty. There’s also nothing more rewarding than chatting with a customer who has seen great results with Romer. The before and after photos and stories of how we’ve helped make people look and feel good in their skin is the best feeling in the world. I created Romer to have an impact on people’s lives — saving people time, simplifying people’s lives. When people hear that mission from me personally, I often draw greater interest beyond the basic goal of just getting better skin!
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
Don’t be afraid to pivot. I launched the business right before Covid so when the pandemic hit, I immediately had to adjust our marketing strategy. As a new business, this was an incredibly scary time. Lots of competitors were turning their focus to digital marketing efforts to reach customers at home and on their devices. As a bootstrapped business, Romer wasn’t going to be able to compete with the budgets of the largest beauty and personal care companies so we decided to get creative. I was living in downtown Chicago at the time and thought about my own lifestyle and how my shopping behavior had changed overnight — delivery everything! So i got to work. First, I developed a partnership with Amazon and worked hard to get Romer on the platform because I recognized that it would become an important distribution channel. Second, I was spending most of my time in our high rise building with hundreds of other people who were quarantining inside of their apartments as well. I thought that a great way to introduce them to Romer would be to set up free sampling in the lobby of the building so that on their way out for a walk or to pick up packages or food delivery, they’d walk by our little table station to pick up free samples and give Romer a try. Once this successfully worked in my building, I picked 10-15 neighboring buildings and did the same in those common spaces. I found great success in both of these efforts.
Contact Info:
- Website: romerskincare.com
- Instagram: @romerskincare