Three years ago, Randi Christiansen, Co-Founder and CEO of the skin care brand Nécessaire, removed the word “sustainable” from her company’s language. “The instant we walk out the front door, we have a footprint,” she says. “Nécessaire is not ‘sustainable.’ We are producing things, and people are consuming them. But, we think about being a responsible company: How can we reduce our footprint? How can we create measurable thresholds for this?”
These values are internally important to the brand – and to how we design and produce our products, according to Christiansen. To the outside world, Nécessaire does not present lofty goals or pledges, instead it shares what it has accomplished to date. Nécessaire is B Corp Certified, a member of 1% For The Planet, Climate Neutral Certified, Plastic Neutral Certified, FSC Certified, and it partners with How2Recycle and One Tree Planet. Made in the USA, their supply chain runs a dual shipping transit system to minimize their carbon footprint.
Christiansen cares for the natural world because it cares for her. The founder has done some of her best thinking while hiking. An innate introvert and “trained extrovert” because of the demands of her work, she finds energy in the calm, back-to-basics routine that she bakes into Nécessaire.
Beyond her impactful CSR work, CEW’s Visionary Award Honoree is recognized for the innovative, disruptive way she’s presented her brand. Christiansen has put a lot of thought into the design of each product’s packaging, the texture of a bottle, the weight of a cap. “We like to say the packaging is furniture for the bathroom,” she says. “These bottles are large. They’re not small things that can be hidden away. So, how do we make them look chic as f*ck?” Having grown far beyond its initial five products, Nécessaire is currently branching out into scalp care, and yes, someday will make the foray into face, says Christiansen, who Goldman Sachs recognized as one of the most exceptional entrepreneurs of the year in 2023.
No matter how large it grows, Nécessaire will stay simple. Christiansen’s ethos on that pulls from her Danish upbringing. “When I think about Nécesssaire — the sort of the idea of having less but better and of the simple things — I think that very much is a thread from the Danish way of life,” she says.
It tracks then that Nécesssaire started with the barest of necessities. “We didn’t have an office,” says Christiansen. “We sat in two chairs at a WeWork with a white piece of paper.” In 2018, it was just her and Nick Axelrod-Welk, her Co-Founder, who she connected with at The Estée Lauder Cos. when he transitioned from editorial at Women’s Wear Daily and Into the Gloss, where he was a Co-Founder. One day, over cheap beers in the Seoul airport, Christiansen and Axelrod-Welk talked about their career dreams — and discovered an overlap. They were passionate about body care, often an afterthought in the prestige skin care world.
How Christiansen started at Lauder was perhaps even more happenstance and quite a formative beginning. A recent graduate of Copenhagen Business School, she traveled to New York City in 2001, and while visiting a friend at Lauder, found herself in an elevator with senior executive Deborah Krulewitch. A conversation turned into a career. “I never imagined a journey in beauty,” says Christiansen, “but I was a skin care freak already.” Soon after meeting Krulewitch and going through an interview process, Christiansen’s first job was in the Presidential Management Program, a rotational program that allows associates to work in various brands and functions. As part of this program, she learned to sell products on the frontline and at point of sale, which helped her identify customer needs in a way her education alone did not. (In Denmark, her degree is called M.Sc Business Administration.) “It was humbling,” she says.
Christiansen worked at the La Mer brand for several years, at the Estée Lauder flagship brand, and at ELC Ventures. She also worked on Tom Ford’s first makeup line — Tom Ford for Estée Lauder.
By working in the strategy capacity for La Mer she learned big lessons. “When you’re in a small business, there are no rules, there are no patterns.” And most importantly, she learned the difference between the brand and the business. “The brand is what holds the heart — the trust and the relevance,” she says. “And the business is the business model. Is it healthy? Is it not healthy? What are the tactics required to make a business win long-term? I learned how to create a brand and how to create a business. Both are very hard tasks.”
Nécessaire has proven both a successful brand and business. She credits building the right 25-person team to finally doing so. She now puts her energy into encouraging her team to focus on Nécessaire’s North Star — staying a formula-first, product-over-marketing, and consumer trust-centered company.
To wannabe beauty entrepreneurs, Christiansen advises that they start with a strong point of view — and equally as important, really learn to sell by understanding distribution and how to break through in the space. “Be humble in areas that are new to you and ask for help. Let me go and find expert advice, an advisory board. And that’s what we did,” says Christiansen.
BY KATE SULLIVAN, CEW US, PUBLISHED MAY 2024
