Thirteen Lune’s Nyakio Grieco: ‘People buy into people before they buy into products’

After selling her skin-care brand Nyakio Beauty to Unilever in 2017, Nyakio Grieco set her sights on beauty retail with the launch of Thirteen Lune in 2020. As multiple beauty retailers were pledging to offer at least 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands, she came up with a “90/10” model for Thirteen Lune: 90% of brands are BIPOC-owned, with 10% owned by those who demonstrate allyship.

With $1 million in funding from celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Combs and a $3 million seed round led by Fearless Fund, Thirteen Lune is in the process of taking over all of JCPenney’s former Sephora locations. It also stocks Grieco’s new skin-care venture, Relevant, which was launched in 2022.

Physical retail is a big part of Grieco’s vision for Thirteen Lune, which will be launching its first standalone physical store early this year in Los Angeles. In this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Grieco shared her success story from the inspiration of her first brand launched in 2002 to her current beauty ventures.