Post Sun Exposure Brand Zure Solaris Launches D2C and At Cos bar

The latest innovation in sun care is going beyond SPF. 

On Thursday, Zure Solaris, a post-sun exposure skin and body care brand, launched through direct-to-consumer and at Cos Bar with four stock keeping units: Shower Rinse, $58, an exfoliating oil-gel formula that can be used as a pre-shower treatment or traditional cleanser; Body Treatment, $138, an antiaging, barrier boosting hydration treatment; Cooling Infusion, $88, a calming and hydrating serum, and Essential Serum, $148, an antiaging, brightening and anti-pollution serum. The Zure Solaris will also have a travel body set. Industry sources estimate the brand could be a multimillion-dollar opportunity. 

The brand was founded by creative director Samuel Cheney and fashion photographer Aaron Hurley. The duo were first connected when working on a shoot several years ago and eventually started their London-based creative studio New Order and worked with a variety of luxury brands. During the duo’s ongoing market research, sun care continuously popped up as a growing category, which led them to look into market gaps. 

“The sun care category has been very interesting for us. Obviously, it’s seen explosive growth, it’s now become a permanent fixture in everyone’s skin care routine,” Cheney said. “That’s been driven by increased consumer education around the aging effects of sun and light exposure, and how harmful it is and how much it accelerates skin aging.” 

Additionally, the duo is aware of how saturated the market has become given the amount of new launches, particularly ahead of summer. However, they still noticed a significant gap in the market. 

“Post-sun has been left as this less superior product category that’s kind of been ignored,” Cheney said. “That whole post-sun time is the antithesis of SPF. It’s the evening. It’s the nighttime. We found this beautiful opportunity to create this very sexy, transportive brand that was all about the golden hour, and that time between day and night.” 

The brand is intentionally tackling the sun care category with a focus on post-exposure and therefore, not launching its own SPF. 

“We’re very much not doing an SPF,“ Cheney said. “There’s so many incredible sun protection products on the market already.“

Hurley added: “We would have been just another sun care brand. It’s important to be known for one thing and do it really, really well, and that’s what we have set out to do.“

According to Cheney, the formulas are vegan, cruelty-free, clinically proven, multisensorial and safe for sensitive skin. Each product features the brand’s hero solar repair complex, which employs key ingredients like calendula to soothe the skin, collagen prepeptide PF to support collagen production, tego cosmo C250 (an amino acid derivative) to address pigmentation, bio-chelate 5 (a fermented mineral complex) to boost growth factors and wild indigo to decrease inflammation.

“It’s what we have developed to address the immediate and lasting aging markers of sun and light exposure,“ Cheney said. “[It’s] a biotech formula, so it’s all about fermentation to increase the bioavailability of the products, making them skin identical. It’s a proprietary blend that uses eight prize materials of natural origination.“

Cheney added: “With continued use, skin’s architecture is strengthened. Coloration, the luminosity and brightness of the skin is improved. Pigmentation fades.…It’s not only reversing some of the aging, but it’s also preventing further aging as well.“

The products feature other skin-loving ingredients that support the barrier function and boost repair, like tremella mushroom, niacinamide, alpha-hydroxy acids and more. Additionally, the brand’s body care products feature a signature scent inspired by that golden hour and developed in collaboration with a perfumer in Grasse, France. It features top notes of calamanzi, violet leaf and ginger; heart notes of nocturnal blossoms, amber and blonde woods, and base notes of white musk, orris, vetiver and suede.

While sun care can often feel like a summer-only product, the team believes its facial skus will be all-year essentials.

“Face brings this brand into an all year-round proposition, because sun and light exposure is all year round. It’s not just when we’re on vacation,” Cheney said. “It’s when we’re on our mobile devices, from the blue light. It’s through the window of our offices. It’s in cooler climates. It’s all the time.“

In addition to launching direct-to-consumer, the brand will be launching in all Cos Bar doors.

“Having started in retail, I was keen to make sure that the brand launched with a retailer from Day One,“ Cheney said. “New brand, new category, something that people need to discover and want to really engage with, it’s so important to be in physical retail.…Their locations, like Aspen and all the places that you would be when you’re going on a fabulous trip in the U.S., Cos Bar seemed to have a location there, so feels very relevant.“

“We will support Zure Solaris in retail through high-touch education and strategic visibility. Samuel and Aaron will be traveling the country to visit our stores for one-on-one training with our beauty specialists,” said Cos Bar chief executive officer Oliver Garfield. “No one can train like brand founders, and having them in-person allows our beauty specialists to confidently communicate the brand’s unique benefits and differentiation. We will position the line front and center in our suncare marketing throughout the summer, emphasizing its essential role in both sun protection and repair.”

While the U.S. is the brand’s target market, it will also be shipping to the EU and the U.K. with plans to expand in international retailers later this year and next. 

“Our opportunity here is 84 percent of all post-sun products globally are from mass brands,” Cheney said. “There’s a real opportunity in the premium space, and when we looked at retailers, less than four percent of the products that they were carrying in those sun care categories were after-sun. It was just all SPF.“