Kelly Slater, the surfing legend who’s famously critical of sunscreen, has teamed up with incubator and venture studio Squared Circles to launch personal care brand Freaks of Nature starting with sunscreen and moisturizer.
To support its entrance into the market, Freaks of Nature raised an oversubscribed funding round of $2.5 million from investors including Michael Meldman, founder of Discovery Land Co. and co-founder of Casamigos, and venture capital firm Bond. Julia Nimocks, former senior director of supply chain at Dandy and senior director of operations and product development at Billie, has joined the brand as CEO.
In a statement, Slater says, “My entire career I’ve been looking for products that are engineered for performance and built for me as a professional athlete, but that are not detrimental to my body or the planet. With Freaks of Nature, we’ve finally cracked that code, enabling athletes to go harder at their sport for longer.”
Getting Slater to cosign on a sunscreen wasn’t easy. On the social media platform X, he wrote in 2011, “I almost never use sunscreen.” One sunscreen he’s confessed to using before is Manda Organic Sun Paste 50. It contains 20% non-nano zinc oxide. “Manda makes good, simple products with minimal ingredients,” Slater told CNN last year. He avoids chemical ultraviolet filters.
But thick Manda Organic Sun Paste 50 isn’t for every outdoor athlete, and Squared Circles has discovered outdoor athletes are hungry for quality products suiting their lifestyles. A survey it conducted reveals that 78% of outdoor athletes are seeking products that strengthen their skin barrier and 95% are seeking skincare brands tailored specifically to their needs.
To win over them and Slater’s exacting product preferences, Squared Circles combined non-nano zinc in Freaks of Nature’s debut SPF 30 mineral sunscreen—$35 Daily Defender Sunscreen—with B-Silk or biotechnology-derived vegan spider silk the brand describes as producing a microbiome-friendly biofilm that provides an extra layer of protection against environmental stressors.
“My entire career I’ve been looking for products that are engineered for performance and built for me as a professional athlete.”
Squared Circles co-founder Lukas Derksen, former managing partner and co-founder at creative agency Sid Lee, says the brand has clinical data showing the biofilm boosts pollution wash-off by almost 100%. It tapped artificial intelligence-powered microbiome platform HelloBiome to verify that its formula is microbiome-friendly.
Freaks of Nature’s other debut product, $48 Deeper Dive Moisturizer, features squalane from Amyris that the brand calls bio-fabricated shark protein as well as marine collagen, brown algae and bacillus ferment. Derksen points out that 2 million to 3 million sharks are killed annually for squalene, an oil from their livers popular in cosmetics, and Freaks of Nature’s lab-generated squalane avoids shark liver oil. Amyris, the biotech company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year and was taken over by Kleiner Perkins chair L. John Doerr earlier this year, also sells squalane to companies like Shiseido, L’Oréal Group and AmorePacific.
Along with Slater, Freaks of Nature has brought on board Ocean Ramsey, a free diver and model, to spread the word about shark conversation. Rock climber Nina Williams is attached to Freaks of Nature, too. Derksen emphasizes that Squared Circles is focused on incorporating novel technologies in its brands’ products and choosing known personalities capable of communicating about them to target audiences.
He says, “There’s so much of a learning curve, and what we’ve come to realize is that these types of individuals that are credible in a particular space can really allow us to be very credible and tell people about these innovations in a very credible way.”
Freaks of Natures’ innovations aren’t limited to the insides of its products. In what Derksen says is a first, the brand’s bottles are constructed entirely from upcycled plastic from Oceanworks. The upcycled plastic bottles are housed within upcycled paper secondary containers. Oceanworks tracks the sources of its plastic on the blockchain. Several beauty and wellness companies such as Caliray, Roberts Beauty and Cocofloss have partnered with it.
Prior to Freaks of Nature, Squared Circles unveiled hypochlorous acid-centered skincare brand Magic Molecule and algae-centered cooking oil brand Algae Cooking Club. The company’s goal is to introduce two to three brands per year, and it expects the brands to reach $50 million in sales in five years.
“We want to be a skin protection brand for the outdoor athlete.”
Last year, Squared Circles closed a seed round led by Wildcat, the family office of TPG Capital founding partner David Bonderman, with participation from L Catterton and Regeneration.VC, the climate VC firm backed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Although it didn’t disclose the amount it’s raised so far, Squared Circles co-founder Alexander Gilkes, former president and co-founder of online auction house Paddle8, says the plan for brands it incubates is to develop them until their minimum viable product stages and then raise $2 million to $3 million on a convertible note for their launches.
Squared Circles’ brands zero in on consumers the company labels “conscious maximalists.” It estimates there are 46 million of them in the United States, and Slater is decidedly among them. Derksen characterizes conscious maximalists as “being highly maximal in how they pursue, life, travel and indulgence, but increasingly conscious in how they scrutinize their health, what they put onto their body and how they impact their surroundings.”
Similar to Squared Circles’ previous and future brands, Freaks of Nature is kicking off in direct-to-consumer distribution. Due to its relationship with Slater, it has the distinct possibility of rolling out to venues where his sustainable clothing brand Outerknown is sold. Outerknown has nine standalone stores and is available at hundreds of retailers, notably surf, ski and more sporting retailers Squared Circles believes could be good fits for Freaks of Nature.
Although Freaks of Nature isn’t landing at beauty specialty chains like Sephora or Ulta out of the gate, Derksen mentions that beauty specialty chains are “starting to wake up to the athletic consumer increasingly, especially the female athletic consumer, with an eye on the Olympics.” He adds athletic consumers have a “clear need state that’s underserved at the moment.”
Roaming around REI, a possible retail distribution target for Freaks of Nature, to do market research in advance of the brand’s launch, Gilkes says he noticed “there was no one brand that pulled together everything from bug repellent to sun care, and that has really been part of the proposition for Freaks of Nature. We want to be a skin protection brand for the outdoor athlete, which is quite a unique offering.”
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings