Erin Kleinberg has lived many professional lives. She got her start as an intern for W Magazine; then, at 21 years old, she stepped further into the fashion world by founding and designing an eponymous clothing line that attracted retailers like Barneys New York and Harvey Nichols. She dove back into publishing by co-founding Coveteur (which shuttered earlier this year) in 2011. Cut to 2015, when Kleinberg launched Métier, a creative agency (where she still works) now servicing the likes of Augustinus Bader, Chanel, Saie, Oribe and more. The latest addition to her overflowing resumé? Beauty entrepreneur.
Following the death of her grandmother, Sidia, in 2020, Kleinberg embarked on what she calls one of her “most personal projects yet”: translating the self-care rituals Kleinberg’s grandmother imparted to her into a body-care brand bearing Sidia‘s name. With her grandmother — “the queen of all things care” — as the brand’s blueprint (“She was always just perfectly glistening,” the founder recounts), Kleinberg’s entrepreneurial motivation also lay in her own need for a non-greasy hand cream and a non-headache-inducing scent.
“I really wanted to create awesome, efficacious, clean body care that has skin-care-level ingredients, but really paired with fine fragrance,” Kleinberg tells Fashionista. “I felt like I always had to go either way, either find a mega heavy fragranced body-care product, or a more clean, efficacious moment. I just wanted to do something that could fuse both worlds.”
Before diving into fragrance offerings, Kleinberg initially launched apparel — think loungewear sets and caftans — to focus on building Sidia’s community while the brand perfected its body care and signature scents behind the scenes. With this emphasis on community, Kleinberg went through a round of angel funding in Sidia’s early days and had two customers invest in the brand along with one of Kleinberg’s late grandmother’s best friends.
Photo: Courtesy of Sidia
In early 2022, Sidia debuted its first two candles: Braless (a warm, spicy scent with notes of amber, bamboo and sandalwood) and Wired (an energizing blend of citrus peel, eucalyptus and tonka).
“The inspiration for all the Sidia scents really, truly comes from igniting and celebrating the emotions we go through each day,” Kleinberg says. “So the aha moment for me with our first candle [Braless], it just spurred in my head, and I was like, oh my God, the best feeling on this goddamn planet is being braless, taking off your bra at the end of the day. There’s no better feeling.”
Following Braless and Wired, Sidia’s fragrance library grew to include: Soaked, a lush, spa-like aroma with spearmint, cypress and pine; Pyro, a fiery mix of rainier cherry, charred rose and peppercorn; and Nirvana, a calming scent with vanilla amber, cactus blossom and bergamot zest. Though it may seem like picking a favorite child, Kleinberg does, in fact, have a favorite Sidia scent: Soaked, which, she says, some Sidia fans have noted “smells like a hot dude.” “It’s so unisex, and it’s so universal, and it’s so androgynous,” she says of Soaked. “It’s just so for everyone.”
In addition to $65 candles, Sidia’s fragrant body-care offerings span hand and body creams, serums and exfoliants packed with shea butter, avocado oil, aloe vera, prickly pear and cactus flower. It recently launched The Soaked Duo ($86), a hand-and-body wash and cream in the outdoorsy scent, as well as its Hand Serum ($36) in Nirvana and Soaked. The brand has also ventured outside the bathroom by launching an auto fragrance for filling a car’s four-door confines with Soaked’s pine-forward scent.
Photo: Courtesy of Sidia
“Our fragrances are meant to really ground you where you are, where other fragrances try to take you to these far off places,” Kleinberg says. “We want to keep you here and create fragrances that can live with you daily, weekly, as time goes on. Maybe one day we’ll have extraordinarily rare fragrances for occasions, but for me, I’m all about the day-to-day.”
Bringing a “sexy moodiness to clean beauty,” Sidia’s packaging (black and forest-green bottles offsetting its white serif logo) was designed to stand out against the customer’s vanity or in their purse, but the products’ functionality was just as important as the aesthetic. Body care often comes last in a beauty routine — if it’s not skipped altogether — so Sidia aimed to center easy application: Its body serum is packaged in a spray bottle, its shower-ready body exfoliant uses a flip cap rather than a jar and its hand serum employs an airless pump.
Since launching its first candles two years ago, Sidia has amassed a wide list of retail partners across Canada and the U.S. including Goop, Revolve, Moda Operandi, ShopBop, Detox Market, Credo Beauty and more. This month, Sidia also added Nordstrom to its list of stockists, placing the body-care and fragrance brand alongside some of the industry’s top performers.
Photo: Courtesy of Sidia
With Kleinberg’s background in retail and the help of clean beauty advisor Geri Hirsch informing Sidia’s strategy, Kleinberg says she selects a retailer to partner with based on who could tell Sidia’s story the best. As the brand positions itself to offer a “little touch of luxury,” Sidia also dabbles in amenities with The Beverly Hills Hotel, L.A.- and Canada-based medispa Formula Fig and Tracy Anderson as partners.
But above all else, Kleinberg’s ultimate goal is to open a sensorial, “otherworldly” brick-and-mortar Sidia store. (The brand dipped its toes in with a pop-up two years ago.) “I’m old school, I like to touch, feel, smell, especially with scent,” she says. “It’s so hard to smell through the screen.” Until then, Kleinberg is focused on gradual growth and continuing to collaborate with brands and retailers that align with Sidia’s values.
“We’ve seen some amazing, amazing growth, but we’re taking our time to make sure that everything feels good to set this up to be a brand that will be around in 20 years,” Kleinberg says.
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Source: Fashionista.com
