Member News

December 19, 2014

Joy Chen wants to sell you positivity in a bottle.

Five years to the month after becoming the Yes To CEO, Chen turned the unprofitable natural beauty products line into a mainstream brand sold on the shelves of retailers such as Target, Whole Foods and Walgreens. The company is positioned for solid international and domestic growth for 2015 through the rebranding, relaunching and development of new products. But there is more work to do.

"It will be important for us to continue to innovate and differentiate our business moving forward," said Chen, who was a vice president for Clorox before joining the company in 2009. "We want to sell products that make people smile. That's how our brand and branding is successful — there's that sassiness in our tone that other natural brands don't have."

Slated for 20 percent growth in 2015, Yes To is gearing up for the introduction of two new product lines, hiring five more employees to add to their current 35-employee office and reaching a broader range of "savvy stylistas."

"Because of our positioning, we reach a different consumer, those women and men who are digitally and socially savvy. We're really trying to sell more of a lifestyle," Chen said.

Reaching those customers wasn't always so simple, however. The brand, which got its start in Israel, was brought to the United States in 2007 and landed in San Francisco after finding a few equity investors in the Bay Area. The unprofitable business needed a turnaround, and Chen's job was to make that turnaround a "growth platform."

Since Chen came on, the company's compound annual growth revenue has jumped by 25 percent. This year, the company hit the $50 million mark, nearly four times 2009's revenue. Along with the brand's Yes To Carrots, Cucumbers, Grapefruit, Blueberries and Tomatoes sub-families, it launched this year its first non-facial-based line with the introduction of its Yes To Coconuts. Boots also picked up the lines in April, helping to propel the company's growth in the United Kingdom where the products are "doing phenomenally well and resonating with the U.K. customer," Chen said. There is also more growth opportunity and different markets left for Yes To in Canada.

"(Yes To) has a very broad-based product line that has allowed it to gain wide distribution with major retail chains and products that are aggressively priced against large multi-national brands," said Brian Fitzpatrick, CEO of Bentley Labs, one of Yes To's major manufacturers. "This has allowed them to capture significant growth in this segment."

And as for Chen's future goals? Expansion and the integration of Yes To products into other parts of consumer's lives will be key.

"We want to expand Yes To beyond just face," she said of mainstreaming the line and competing with brands such as Aveeno and Olay. "We want to be a leader in body and other categories in segments that we're not in, but natural matters. Natural is still a very small category in beauty, but the Yes To brand name and all of our expansion plans will allow us to mainstream the concept."

One example of bringing natural beauty to the masses was a collaboration between Target and Yes To. Together, they came up with the idea for the Yes To Cucumbers Towelettes, and the product is now one of the top selling natural beauty items at Target, said Target spokeswoman Sarah VanNevel.

Mainstreaming natural beauty has been the goal since day one for Chen, who has worked carefully over five years to get everyone else on board.

"The business challenges can be overcome quickly, but it was really tough to get everyone on board with the company's direction. It was about how to execute the plan and get the human aspect of the business aligned," Chen said.

Streamlining the office was one of Chen's biggest challenges in transitioning from the large Clorox environment to a small business. The "refreshing transition" played a huge role in the company's initial growth, and since those early years, Chen has put most of her focus into hiring a diverse office with a variety of experiences.

"When you can cultivate a team with diversity of thought and get them to work together, that's when breakthrough happens," Chen said.

A large factor in that was the importance of celebrating the little successes. Somewhere in the company's SoMa headquarters, Yes To still has a little bell that people ring when they get good news, serving as "a way for people to celebrate successes along the way."
Yes To

Location:  San Francisco

What it does:  Natural beauty product line

CEO:  Joy Chen

2013 revenue: $42 million

2014 revenue: $50 million

Annual growth since 2009: 25 percent

Founded: 2007

Employees: 35

Website: www.yestocarrots.com

Element of success: Employees with a mix of small and big business backgrounds

Future plans: Expanding product line to other parts of the body, rebranding baby line