ul and perform better,” Georgia Geminder, founder of Gem, told Inside Retail. Similarly, Vitality Brands’ Epzen ventured further into the body care market this month with the release of a body serum and body butter to complement its bath salt offering. Lucinda Sabo, general manager of marketing and digital at Vitality Brands, told Inside Retail, “Our brand mission is to turn the boring, everyday, shower, lotion or bath into an experience that enriches your daily routine and becomes a treasured ritual.” Market overview Currently, Gem is the fourth top oral care brand in Australia and the brand retails direct-to-consumer (DTC) online – in addition to its Australian retail partners.  “We’ve got a great partnership with Boots in the UK, they’ve been an amazing retail partner and we’ve got a couple of exciting opportunities in the US, so keep your eyes peeled,” Geminder said.  “We’re outselling traditional oral care companies on the shelf and we’re only four years old.”  Since founding the oral care brand in 2020 with one product, Gem has grown to a 28 product SKUs – with that tipped to grow in the last quarter of 2024. Gem’s team has tripled in size with the business’s growth and Geminder said revenue has grown by over 150 per cent year-on-year, “so things are doing well.” Ranging for Gem deodorant was approved within two days of Woolworths hearing the pitch and then it was “all systems go,” Geminder said. “I think I trialled about 75 samples of the product. To me, it was important to get the formulation perfect from an efficacy and fragrance perspective. If the formulation wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t going to launch. We really hustled to get these products to market and I’m super proud of them,” Geminder added. Why body care? Vitality Brands is a privately owned, Melbourne-based manufacturer and wholesaler, with an approximate annual revenue of $130 million and a portfolio of brands including Cancer Council Sunscreen. Dedicated to wellness, Vitality Brands acquired New Zealand-based clean-beauty brand Essano earlier this year and similarly purchased Tribe Skincare in August last year. For Geminder, launching into a new category has not come without challenges. “There’s logistical nightmares and challenges every day, that’s the nature of being in business,” she said. “My late father-in-law used to say ‘no problems, no business’. So that’s the reality that we face every day and it’s just about being resilient,” she added. Online delivery of the new product has proved tricky, as aerosol is classified as a dangerous good. To combat this hurdle, Gem is encouraging customers to shop in-store as opposed to buying it online, Geminder said. “But delivery-wise, there’s always a way and they are available online too,” she added. In 2024, the body care category in Apac is valued at about $624 million and hydration accounts for 80 per cent of a skincare routine, according to Worth Global Style Network’s (WGSN) ‘Hydration Wars’ research. Further driving the opportunity for market disruptors is the fact that 70 per cent of adults are interested in body care products with popular ingredients used in facial skincare, according to WGSN’s ‘Future of Bath and Body 2025’ research. “When I look at my customers’ routine, they start their day by brushing their teeth and finish with deodorant and walking out the door,” Geminder said. It was this observation that reinforced to Geminder that deodorant and body care in general was the next opportunity.  “We’re the only deodorant or antiperspirant to put skincare at the forefront of our formulation, we’re really tapping into – on-trend skin-loving ingredients like hyaluronic acid, shea butter and vitamin E,” Geminder said. Accessibility was a major focus for Geminder, and the deodorants are priced at A$10 each. “The vision of having beautiful efficacious products that work and are available to customers in all areas of the market has always been a real dream of mine,” she added. Similarly at Vitality Brands, “Epzen is the no ‘BS’ approach to self-care,” Sabo said. “We bring wellness back down to earth with real-world rituals that don’t ask you to be better or do more.”