Part of the new wave of Italian beauty brands for digital natives, Veralab is a body care brand launched in 2015 by Cristina Fogazzi. In 2020, Veralab grew exponentially during the pandemic, (almost) doubling its sales to €55 million. Building on this momentum, the brand, which was initially present on the web, supplemented its e-commerce offer with physical shops in Milan and Rome. Zoom on an Italian success story!
A brand, a cult
In the space of just a few years, a beautician has created a veritable cult around a beauty products company with a turnover of 50 million euros. The secret of her success? To take her world by storm, by speaking frankly about skin imperfections and ageing, taboo subjects in the merciless world of beauty and aesthetics.
Her name is Cristina Fogazzi. She calls herself the “cynical beautician“, questioning the ideals of youth, thinness and plastic perfection. Hailing from the small town of Sarezzo in northern Italy, Cristina has truly transformed a small start-up into a leading beauty brand. It must be said that the approach adopted by the entrepreneur is new, disruptive, in a country that has long “fantasised” about the ideal woman, necessarily thin, young, perfect.
For her part, Cristina Fogazzi, 49, quickly understood that she had to join the movement that was developing in the world of beauty, the key word of which was “realism“. Gone are the ideals of the perfect body, commonplace on the covers of magazines, and in are the imperfections. A wind of freshness has blown into a sector in need of renewal…
A wide range of products
Veralab offers a wide range of products for everyone. Indeed, women and men of all ages who want to take care of themselves and find a beauty routine for the face and body can use the brand’s products. Especially since the said products are designed for all skin types, and all imperfections! Veralab designs and markets anti-cellulite products, face creams and masks, exfoliating products, serums, hand and lip treatments…
Who is Cristina Fogazzi, aka the cynical beautician?
Born in 1974 in Sarezzo in the province of Brescia, Cristina Fogazzi‘s story is that of a digital entrepreneur who has harnessed the potential of e-commerce by building a large online community. Today, she has 1 million followers on Instagram and 420,000 on Facebook.
Named by Forbes Italia as one of the 100 most influential women of 2020, Fogazzi graduated from a classical high school and then studied to be a beautician. Growing up in the beauty industry, she opened the Bellavera Beauty Centre in Milan in 2009, starting a few years later to give beauty tips on Youtube and Facebook. Talking about her entrepreneurial adventure, Cristina had this to say to the Italian press: “I started this job a bit late, at 34. At first I was a waitress and a saleswoman, then I decided to believe in myself: it was a hard few years. A beautician’s income is very low: I only started to earn a good living with the products. That’s when she launched Veralab in 2016, a brand that now sells three million products a year !
