NuFace co-founder Tera Peterson: 'Don't try to be everything'

When reviewing the beauty landscape, there are increasingly fewer companies that are built as family businesses. Today, the market skews heavily toward building a company and selling it at a faster-than-ever clip. Though deal flow continues to be hot, NuFace's founders Carol Cole and her daughters, Tera Peterson and Kim Morales, are focused on building their brand while keeping themselves at the helm for as long as possible.

"My mom, my sister and I started NuFace back in 2005. My mom's been an esthetician since the 1980s. After business school, I decided to go to esthetician school. We created our first device out of our family home in Leucadia, which is a little beach community of Encinitas [outside] San Diego," said Peterson on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast.

Since founding the brand 17 years ago, NuFace has sold over 4 million devices. Peterson added that NuFace is up 24% in sell-through for 2022. The device category is typically a difficult market to create ongoing value, but NuFace has also avoided the fate of competitors, which saw initial buzz and interaction with their brands but never saw the repeat purchase.

"The innovation is key; that's where typical devices fail," she said. "They go, 'OK, I'm gonna do X and then I'm going to launch this completely non-related other device." Like, what are you? Are you cleansing? Are you microdermabrasion? It really confuses people, and that's where other devices have really struggled. They don't stay true to themselves."