IADS Exclusive: Innovative Thinking Interview Thirteen Lune’s fight for representation in the beauty space

IADS interviewed one of the co-founders of Thirteen Lune, Nyakio Grieco, to understand more about the inclusive e-commerce beauty marketplace. Grieco created her first beauty brand 20 years ago to celebrate the sophistication of Africa in premium beauty, inspired by the teachings of her Kenyan grandparents who shared their beauty secrets with her. During the racial reckoning of 2020, she found herself and many other founders of color on various lists celebrating Black beauty founders. 

This pushed her to start researching these brands and founders, which then led her to realize that many of these brands had very little distribution or representation in large retailers. This is what led her and her co-founder Patrick Herning (founder of plus-sized fashion brand 11 Honoré) to create Thirteen Lune to be the first of its kind truly inclusive retail beauty platform. The company has a 90/10 rule: 90% of all the brands carried are created by people of color around the globe who make products for people of all colors, and 10% of the brands are dedicated to fostering allyship. Thirteen Lune is deeply committed to building generational wealth in Black and Brown communities while helping to make the beauty industry more inclusive. 

IADS provides its members with a weekly in-depth analysis on retail-oriented topics. This is an example of the themes the Association regularly addresses, and the topic of an article from the IADS members-only newsletter date 7 December 2022.