Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s Lemme Is in Expansion Mode
Matcha, homemade deodorant and yoni steams — all for a TV audience.
Kourtney Kardashian Barker has long been an early adopter of wellness trends, and is quick to share her findings.
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That includes her love of nutritional supplements, which have always had a leading part in her health routines but have taken on a starring role recently. “The supplement thing is like a full-time job,” Kardashian Barker said.
“Just managing what supplements I’m taking, when, how many, it’s constantly changing,” she said. “I’m constantly doing bloodwork, I do muscle testing to test which supplements test well with my body specifically.”
Born out of her own personal experience, Kardashian Barker spun that knowledge into another type of job: entrepreneur. Last year, she launched Lemme, a range of benefits-oriented gummies promising clean ingredients and eschewing virgin plastic, each priced at $30. After launching on Amazon in November, the brand is debuting at Ulta Beauty on Friday, first online and then with an 800-door rollout to Ulta’s The Wellness Shops ensuing thereafter.
Lemme’s expansion comes at a time of growth for the supplement market. Mintel estimates the U.S. vitamins, minerals and supplements category will hit $45.2 billion by 2027.
For Kardashian Barker, who has used supplements as part of her daily routine for the last eight years or so, that momentum, combined with her personal journey, means the time is finally right to bring her vision to life. “I’ve been in the final hour with different opportunities,” she said. “It just hasn’t felt right. Some of them were my own, but maybe I didn’t feel like the partner had the same goals.”
“When looking at the ingredients of a lot of the gummies that I would expect even the top-selling brands, as we started deep-diving and doing research, the top gummies not only don’t taste great, but the ingredients aren’t things I like to take myself. Certainly things that my kids have heard me say multiple times,” Kardashian Barker continued. “No corn syrup, no food coloring. Gummies was the perfect place for Lemme to start.”
Lemme launched with gummies and has since ventured into tinctures, with the Lemme Sea Irish Sea Moss Liquid Drops, which contains trace minerals, vitamin D3 and biotin. “Gummies always feel like a more exciting part of my supplement routine — like a treat,” she said.
Her business partner, Simon Huck, said that Lemme’s been just shy of five years in the making. “She set out to build a team, work with her doctors, nutritionists and create a gummy vitamin that is delicious, driven by science and uses clinically studied ingredients,” Huck said. “Kourtney’s philosophy from the very beginning was that what you leave out of your gummy is just as important as what you leave in.”
He works in lockstep with Kardashian Barker on creative strategy, marketing and product innovation. “Kourtney is involved in every single way — from the formulation, down to the illustrations you see on the bottle, all of which are hand drawn by her,” Huck said. “Kourtney is sending messages in our group chat constantly about new ingredients, asking to set up calls with our formulator.”
If the response thus far is any indication, Kardashian Barker’s following saw the white space, too. “The business is doing incredibly well. We’ve had 20 percent month-over-month growth since we launched, and we’ve had numerous sellouts,” Huck said.
“Traditionally, when you hear ‘selling out,’ that seems like a good problem to have. But we don’t actually look at it as a good problem, we want to be able to fulfill the demand,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons why the Lemme subscription rate is so high — we have a 50 percent subscription rate because it guarantees the product.”
Bestsellers include Lemme Debloat, a digestive gummy with prebiotics and probiotics that have clinical backing, and was sold out for six weeks. Lemme Purr, a vaginal health gummy, as well as the Lemme Sea Irish Sea Moss Tincture, have both sold out numerous times, too, Huck said.
Ulta expects that demand to translate to their partnership.
“[Lemme’s] assortment is very holistic,” said Penny Coy, vice president of merchandising, Ulta Beauty. “They support a spectrum of concerns, they’re vegan and consciously made to support one’s gut health, energy, focus, sleep, relaxation and vaginal health. Down-there care, especially with our younger guests, has really resonated.”
Wellness and ingestibles across the board have resonated with Gen Z, Coy said. Ulta’s current assortment includes brands like Golde and Moon Juice. “We’ve seen an increase between that connection between wellness and beauty among our guests — everyone’s trying to improve their well-being and put their best foot forward,” she said. “Speaking of holistic well-being becoming a priority — it’s especially with Gen Z, which is a focus guest. It’s one of the key reasons we built this curated assortment.”
Lemme also joins several celebrity-founded brands that have found traction with Ulta shoppers, including Tracee Ellis Ross’ Pattern Beauty, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, and Ariana Grande’s R.e.m. Beauty, among others.
“Celebrity-founded brands have proven success at Ulta and with our guests,” Coy said. “They’re often at the forefront of emerging trends and innovation, their networks spark interest and bring us new guests. They have their tribes and in many cases, a loyal following.”
Given the brand’s performance directly on its website, as well as on Amazon, Kardashian Barker thinks her timing is spot-on to go in-store. “There’s something so unique about the experience of going into a store, looking around, touching things and putting them in your basket. Taking it to the counter is a different experience than shopping online.”
The brand has already exceeded Kardashian Barker’s expectations online, and entering third-party retail was a natural next step. “We’re big Ulta shoppers — there’s an Ulta down the street, and I told my daughter who loves Ulta that we were taking Lemme there, and she’s so excited.”
Huck explained that Lemme’s customers already shop at Ulta, hence the decision to ink the exclusive retail partnership. “We knew that our customer was shopping at Ulta and we also knew our customer was discovering things through Ulta’s wellness shops, that this is a place they are going to discover new products. Ulta also does an incredible job on allowing brands to educate and story-tell,” Huck said. “So much of what we’re doing is educating and storytelling, teaching the customer about our ingredients, our formulations, our philosophy and our values.”
Lemme’s core consumer ranges in age from 18 to 44 years old, and skews 70 percent female. “This customer is very interested in science and innovation. They’re focused on health and wellness, and sustainability, for them, is table stakes. So, having 100 percent post-consumer recycled bottles was a non-negotiable for Kourtney, and we work with a carbon fund to offset every one of our shipments,” Huck said.
Shoppers regularly comment on sustainability. “That’s what we hear from social listening. If you look at our TikToks, we’ll have thousands of comments on our Lemme TikTok. What ingredient are you using for this? Can we get a hair, skin and nail gummy? Can you launch capsules? And we also get customer feedback on our website,” Huck said.
Kardashian Barker drew from Poosh, the wellness content and commerce platform she debuted in 2019, when ideating the brand. “I learn so much with Poosh on a daily basis, from ingredient spotlights to wellness trends,” she said. “So much of what drives so many of the stories is my own wellness journey. It’s such a great outlet for me to have Poosh, and Lemme, as I introduce it now, is an extra level of that.”
Her wellness journey also spawns rapid-fire product ideas. “I send at least one idea a week of a supplement, gummy or tincture that I think would be a good idea, or something that I feel is missing — certain things I feel we could combine even,” Kardashian Barker said. “I love multitasking, I love being able to combine things that make more sense together. Even with our Poosh team, it’s just important that it comes from the heart and that it is something that feels like it’s adding to the world instead of just another thing to sell.”
Huck said Kardashian Barker cares about bloating, cognition, feminine health, among other need states. “These are all things that Kourtney was passionate about based on her feedback from her Poosh community.”
To that end, one of Lemme’s inaugural stock keeping units, Lemme Matcha, which combines the green tea powder with coenzyme Q10 and vitamin B12, is a permutation of Kardashian Barker’s well-documented love of the beverage.
New formats are catching the brand’s eye, Huck said. “That’s something we talk about daily, and we’re interested in beauty from within — ingestible beauty. We’re in women’s health, and it’s a category that Kourtney will continue to invest in. In terms of what our product launches look like, so much is dictated based on that feedback loop we have with our customers.”
The brand’s customers are also proficient in wellness, and that’s informed Lemme’s communication strategy. “The most important thing is educating on the science,” Huck said. “Many customers have so much coming at them at all different times of the day, and making the decision on what supplement best suits their needs, and most people are looking for a vitamin and supplement that’s going to fill a gap in their diet… For us, the most important thing that we can do is provide science and innovation that’s easy to understand and digest. That’s our north star in all of our creative decisions.”
With that in mind, the goal was to add levity to supplement routines for shoppers. “Kourtney and I felt that fun and levity needed to be there. You can have a science-backed brand and also have the levity and fun of Lemme, and those two things don’t need to be on separate islands,” Huck said. “That was part of the opportunity, creating a brand to toe the line.”
Founding a brand follows in her sisters’ footsteps — in 2019, Coty Inc. bought a majority stake in Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million; that same company acquired 20 percent of Kim Kardashian’s KKW Beauty for $200 million two years later.
Kardashian Barker has done different collaborations in the space, including with Barker Wellness, husband Travis Barker’s namesake wellness line, and with O.G. wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow on a Goop candle called “This Smells Like My Pooshy.”
Though it’s only the second time she’s gone at the space alone, Lemme falls in line with advice from Kardashian Barker’s mom-ager Kris Jenner. “My mom always says to find what you love, and figure out how to get paid for it. This is the first time besides Poosh that I have that,” she said.
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