Jenna Meek and Jess Hunt are two young entrepreneurs who founded REFY, a beauty brand on a mission to redefine beauty. Their business idea began when Jenna met beauty influencer Jess Hunt on a photoshoot and noticed Jess’ exhaustive brow routine. “It was something ridiculous, like five different eyebrow gels, multiple brushes, and then a pomade and a pencil to do her brows every single day,” said Jenna. “her Instagram followers constantly asked what products she used on her brows to create her signature brushed-up look, so creating a streamlined brow collection made sense.” The two recognized the gap in the market for easy, uncomplicated brow care and created a brow sculpting product near the end of 2018.
Jess used her Instagram following of 1.3 million and her clever marketing skills to promote their idea, while Jenna, already the founder of Shrine, a viral color cosmetics and hair brand, planned and managed REFY using her business experience. After developing their product for two years, they released it in November 2020 to instant success, with their brow care product completely selling out after only six weeks. When they restocked the next January, they had over 10,000 pre-orders already and sold a total of 15,000 orders in the first four hours.
Their business has since grown to include various skincare products such as bronzers, highlighters, blush shades, and of course, brow products with a focus on enhancing and embracing natural beauty, and have been positively reviewed in Sheerluxe, Glamour, and Vogue. Soon after their resounding success, Sephora approached Jess and Jenna with an offer to stock REFY. “Sephora is the biggest beauty destination in the world for premium cosmetics and was the number one retailer I wanted to partner with when I had the initial idea for the three-stage brow collection. I could only have dreamt that we’d complete that goal within 6 months when we first launched the business.” Jenna said. “It’s an incredibly exciting time for the business to see what we can achieve next – we have big plans for the next six months!”
Jess used her following as a way to create and sell a product in a simple, understandable package. With all of the complexity that others were using, the easy use and access of their product makes it a much better option for the average consumer.