How Julie Chamberlain Found Her ‘Sweet Spot’ Growing A Skincare Brand From Hampton
HAMPTON, N.B. — After years of working for a major beauty brand in Paris and New York, Julie Chamberlain is helping build one out of her home in Hampton.
Chamberlain is the general manager of SweetSpot Labs, a company that specializes in skincare and wellness products for the skin below the neck, more specifically, below the belt.
The company, which was originally founded in 2003 by a woman named Shari Creed, was acquired in 2014 by Halifax-headquartered Skinfix, a skincare company that’s currently exploding at beauty retail giant Sephora. But while Skinfix products predominately focus on the face, SweetSpot Labs create focused on women’s intimate skin health.
“We really exist to serve intimate skin health for all women at every age and stage,” says Chamberlain. “We do that in similar philosophy to Skinfix in that we really believe in designing products with a higher standard that are beyond clean, and with ingredients that are clinically active at clinically active levels and tested and approved by dermatologists and gynecologists.”
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Chamberlain joined the company back in November 2020, when Skinfix CEO Amy Gordinier reached out to her about leading the brand. But before that, the Bathurst native had worked with beauty giant L’Oréal from its offices in both Canada, New York and Paris. But after her first two children were born, she started to miss the pace of life of the Maritimes.
I love my career, I love beauty, I love women, I love building brands and running businesses,” says Chamberlain. “But I also love my home and how I was raised and how I could fundamentally get that sweet spot, which I ended up doing, but it took a while to get there.”
In 2016 Chamberlain left L’Oréal and moved with her family back to New Brunswick. Shortly after, she took on a project role at Irving Oil as a senior brand strategist, an opportunity that came not long after meeting Irving Oil executive vice-president and chief brand officer Sara Irving in New York while she was still working for L’Oréal.
“I loved working with Sarah,” says Chamberlain. “I learned I tonne from her as a leader but also about brand building from inside out, which was something I hadn’t really done at L’Oréal because it was really a school of product marketing.”
After the project at Irving Oil wrapped up, Chamberlain realized she missed working in consumer goods. She went back to work for L’Oréal in Montreal, but once again realized how much she wanted to be home. After meeting the executives at Moncton-based cannabis producer Organigram, she saw another chance. In 2019 she joined the company as its executive vice-president of marketing.
“I loved everything about it. It totally confirmed for me that I was actually pretty entrepreneurial, which was a doubt I had working at a legacy brand for so long,” she says. “Even if their culture is entrepreneurial, that’s one thing. But actually building something is quite another and that was amazing.”
It was a year and a half working at Organigram when she got the call from Gordinier, who she met at the same conference where she met Sarah Irving. Gordinier was looking for someone to lead the growth of SweetSpot Labs, which the company purchased in 2014, but didn’t have dedicated leadership for up until that point. As general manager, Chamberlain could once again work in the industry she loved, help grow a brand, all the while doing it from her home in Hampton.
Obviously, she said yes.
“I felt like I was running not away from something, but towards something. It was more what I had confirmed that I loved at Organigram but even better suited … and I could do it from home virtually,” says Chamberlain. “So it was a ‘Hell yes.'”
SweetSpot Labs creates products that focus on women’s intimate health (though some products, like Gentle Wash, can be used all over the body).
Its product line includes washes, wipes, serums, exfoliators, moisturizers and balms, all using ingredients that are both safe and beneficial for the skin around intimate areas.
Their products help address issues such as vulvar dryness, ingrown hairs, post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation and other kinds of skin irritations that can impact that area.
“We really believe in the emotional connection between healthy skin and a healthy spirit. and that skin health doesn’t stop at the neck. It follows very much the philosophy of Skinfix in wanting to treat compromised skin to bring it back to a state of wellness and keep it there,” says Chamberlain.
“But our version of that is that it’s below the neck and we really believe that all skin needs and deserves to be cared for even when others don’t see because there are real issues down there.”
Right now SweetSpot Labs products are sold online through its website, Amazon and Well.ca. It’s also carried at Ulta in the United Stated and Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada.
Since joining the company in November, Chamberlain says the company is focused on accelerating its e-commerce presence on both its website and Amazon. It also wants to cement its relationship with Ulta in the United States, where it’s one of few brands in its category.
“We’re one of only three brands that they invested to date to be part of this wellness category for them. They’re going to be further developing that over the next couple of years,” says Chamberlian. “So it’s really our opportunity to go to market with the first real integrated marketing campaign the brand has done in order to drive to [point of sale] to make that a success with Ulta and establish ourselves as a category leader.”
Meanwhile, Chamberlain will be doing all this from her Hampton home, where she remotely works with her team that’s scattered across Canada (including the Atlantic Region) and the United States.
“I’m so grateful for that. I have three young kids and it really helps me live in my own sweet spot and thrive and feel like I can do big things, but then get on my bike and go to Kedl’s for ice cream with the kids,” she says.
“There really is nothing better than that. I don’t feel at all that I sacrifice anything for it.”
Though some companies like SweetSpot Labs and its parent company SkinFix had always offered opportunities to work remotely, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that a lot of jobs can be done from anywhere. Chamberlain hopes that both her journey and SweetSpot Labs can show people and businesses that it’s possible to do big things from anywhere.
“I hope SweetSpot Labs and I are an example for them to say you don’t have to choose either-or. It can be ‘and’,” she says. “You can have a fulfilling, strategic, big career and live somewhere that aligns with your values. It doesn’t need to be one or the other. I think there is no time better than now.”