If there is one thing Sara Shah understands, it’s that the path to great skin is not a race. It’s a marathon. A journey. The founder and CEO of Journ is disrupting skincare for women of color. The brand’s ethos is rooted in embracing every woman’s unique beauty journey, and breaking down silos between skincare and makeup. I spoke to Sara about her journey to Journ.
What led you to Journ?
Journ was born through my own journey with cystic acne. In my previous life, I was a lawyer in New York City and had little time for self-care or my own beauty regimen. I was constantly having to wear products to heal my acne and cover it up. But even after all the effort I put into it, I just couldn’t achieve natural-looking skin. I turned to the makeup industry for answers and I found that while there are some brands out there addressing the shade aspect of makeup, no one is really tackling the underlying skin issues (acne, scarring, hyper-pigmentation and dark circles). So, I turned to my husband and co-founder, Mir and said, “There is nothing really out there that improves these underlying issues.” His response was “Well then, let’s create it!” That was the beginning of our journey.
Journ products tackle skin care concerns that tend to be problems for women of color (olive and deep skin tones). What are some of the issues that women with this skin tone typically face?
I think the most common concern for women with olive or deeper skin tone is dark circles. Other common problems are hyper-pigmentation, uneven skin tone, and dullness – actually what shows up as dullness is simply that olive tones tend to have yellow undertones, which can create the appearance of dullness in the skin. And of course, acne is one of the most common skin issues globally, but in medium and deeper tones, the red scars turn brown or purple over time. Most skin problems are universal, it’s how they appear on different tones that is the issue.
How do Journ products specifically address these issues?
So, let me go back to my own skincare challenges because those really informed the different product lines at Journ. The first challenge was achieving flawless skin, but the second challenge was that I was tired of layering all these different products to cover up my acne. I wanted just one product that worked for me and simplified my routine. I was a working lawyer and now I am a mom, I simply don’t have a lot of time for self-care. It’s a challenge for many women who are busy and don’t have time for a five or ten-step beauty regimen.
Our products are skincare-focused cosmetics –makeup products with skincare built into them that target specific areas of concern. For example, Kauai is a color corrector that conceals acne, dark circles, and hyper-pigmentation, but also helps with those problems. It targets and helps fade them over time.
It’s cool that Journ is about simplifying beauty, because current trends skew towards multi-step routines. What’s your take on that?
There are two parts to this. The first is that I think that skincare and makeup shouldn’t be siloed. I believe the products that sit on our faces for 8-12 hours a day should offer benefits that are more than skin deep. So, I wanted to create something that was a hybrid product – efficacious enough to help with skin issues while concealing like regular makeup.
The second part took me by surprise when I started developing my own products. It’s what’s known as sprinkling ingredients in the beauty industry. As an example, I was traveling with a friend of mine in Morocco and we got to test some pure, cold-pressed argan oil. It smelled nothing like the argan products you find in most beauty brands. So, you could be purchasing an argan-based product that has been labeled as “argan,” but it may only contain 0.1% of the ingredient. The rest are likely synthetics to achieve the right look and feel. So, it was important to create products with ingredients that are clinically proven to show results and use the ingredients at efficacious levels to show results.
I think those were the two most important things – simplifying beauty by marrying the worlds of skincare and makeup and delivering products that do what they say they do.
The beauty industry is tough. It’s dominated by established players and now celebrity brands. What are some of the challenges in trying to break through the noise?
That’s definitely a challenge and is for any new brand in this space, because as you mentioned, there are some long established players. Our products are unique and there isn’t anything on the market like them, but we are constantly thinking about brand awareness. We listen to our customers and create solutions that address their concerns – I am not saying we are the only ones doing this, but the customer’s needs are central to the products we create. I believe that if we continue to address issues for women of color, an under-served market, and deliver effective products, we will rise above the noise.
Let’s talk about the transition from full-time lawyer to entrepreneur. What’s that been like?
I’ve been working on Journ full-time for two years now and I’ve never looked back. I absolutely love what I do. I was successful as a lawyer but for a long time, I felt unfulfilled. I think what I wanted to do and what I was doing were misaligned. And it took me some time to get there – I had invested seven years in my education, taken two bar exams, there were a lot of expectations. I think I was afraid to step away from that commitment. Once I made the decision that I didn’t want to sacrifice my future for that investment, it was easy to transition to Journ full-time. I feel that I am destined to do this.
What were some of the challenges you’ve faced early on, in your new life as an entrepreneur?
I think one of the biggest challenges has been the practical side of things. A lawyer’s day is structured – action items based on billable hours. If I was reviewing a contract, it sat in a time bucket. Once it was done, I wouldn’t think about it.
Being an entrepreneur is exactly the opposite. You’re pulled in different directions, you need to be creative everyday, and I wasn’t used to a lack of structure. I am a creative person, but I wasn’t tapping into it as a lawyer. Initially, I would give myself time buckets to finish tasks but that’s not how creativity and inspiration work. My co-founder and husband is a true creative. Something can take him 10 minutes or 10 hours. That transition has been a challenge, but it’s also been liberating. I can go anywhere with this brand, think of anything, use different ways to inspire myself and fuel that creativity. I’m not bound by time buckets. It’s been so much fun, but it was a challenge initially.
What’s the message you would like women to come away with to help them on their own journeys?
I think for us as a brand, beauty is not surface level. It sounds cliched, but beauty is more than skin deep. So, there are a few things we want to do. The first is that we want to challenge beauty standards and change them. We have beauty tutorials on our website where we have ordinary women, demonstrating the product, and my 22-month-old daughter loves watching them. She sees a Bengali woman, or a Black woman using the products and doesn’t see beauty as being about skin tone but about skin concerns.
The second piece is what started Journ in the first place — celebrating beautiful journeys. It’s embracing the stories of women like you and I, that are on their own unique path. That’s beauty to me – taking stumbles and honoring them because they make up part of someone’s story. And lastly, I think it is being represented. We need much more representation across the board, but especially in the beauty industry because it touches almost every woman.
Sara’s outlook on beauty isn’t just innovative it is inclusive. She was kind enough to send me some products, including a tube of Alpenglow, to address the bane of my skincare woes — uneven tone. What has me hooked, isn’t just the beautiful branding, formula and texture. It is that this little tube of three key ingredients just works. In a week my skin was more even and under a thin layer of foundation, as close to flawless as it will ever be. The “model” who demonstrates it, reminds me of my best friend.
My chat with Sara, reminds me of an article I published a few months back titled, You look familiar — “Instagram Face” and the deracialization of beauty. I questioned whether Instagram and the beauty industry at large were pushing women to obscure their features in favor of a racially ambiguous look. Brands like Journ are challenging this trend, encouraging women to embrace their uniqueness and see themselves in the brands they use. After years of struggling with my own skincare journey, I can finally see myself in Journ. And that is beautiful.
