Beauty Without Rules: Bobbi Reflects on One Year of Jones Road

If you don’t know, the name Jones Road was not ideated with a team of experts at a round table. Instead, it happened one day when Bobbi and her husband took a drive, she held the phone to guide them and Waze showed her ‘Jones Road’ was the street ahead. It wasn’t where they were supposed to turn, but the name would be the direction where Bobbi was about to bring her new brand.

The launch of Jones Road, which was independently funded and operates as a true indie brand, happened exactly one year ago. It was the same week of the 2020 presidential election, in the middle of the pandemic, and on the day in which Bobbi’s 25-year non-compete was up. “There was no better time than that moment, what was I going to wait for the next calm moment?,” Bobbi says. “There wasn’t going to be one.”

There is a serendipitous nature to how Bobbi Brown does things, as a woman, as an entrepreneur, as a boss. “Anyone that doesn’t know me probably thinks everything is really planned out and strategic, but nothing is,” she says.

“I’m not going to lie. The thought of doing it again was scary—was I a one-hit-wonder? Can I do it again? I didn’t know if people would compare the brands or say there aren’t a lot of colors or the packaging isn’t fancy and heavily marketed, but I put all my heart and soul into it,” Bobbi says. “I made the product I believed in. And I’m really proud of myself that I did it and I hope I can encourage other people to take the plunge. And pursue that dream.”

Once again, Bobbi has done it. Within the first year of Bobbi Brown’s launch of Jones Road, it was dubbed the fastest growing DTC brand of 2021 by Business Insider, Miracle Balm was named the Multi-Tasking Product of the Year by Shape Magazine, The Best Pencil won the Allure Best in Beauty Award, The Mascara is named a best product of the year by W Magazine. “I’m also really proud of creating products that make women look better,” says Bobbi.

Jones Road is a new approach to beauty, these are intuitive products that are easy to use for both the expert and the novice. Products that meet you where you need to be met and allow you to choose exactly how you want to look and feel. They’re also created following the Credo beauty guidelines, which also make them clean.

“When I left the brand I had breakfast with the founder of Credo and she handed me this list. She said if you ever get back into beauty, don’t put any of these in your products,” says Bobbi. “I cherished that list. When I started, I gave that list to the chemists. I didn’t know if it was possible to create efficacious formulas that perform and do what they are supposed to, but still look natural on the face.” The Credo guidelines are more stringent than those set by the E.U., eliminating 2,700 harmful ingredients.

The new direct-to-consumer beauty space is a game-changer allowing consumers the ability to curate their makeup bags and medicine cabinets to fit the life they have and be ready for the places they will go. “At the end of my tenure at my old brand, I was so over what I was in the middle of and saw what was happening with the DTC beauty space and I said, this is so much cooler, it makes total sense,” says Bobbi. “Companies were launching with one or two products and I was on this wheel to continue to invigorate this big giant brand. And I’m like, I was so happy to get off the wheel.”

Despite all of the DTC success, Jones Road will have its first brick and mortar store later this year in Montclair, New Jersey where the brand was launched.

“Yes, I’m the boss again. I’m encouraging my team to do what they do best. Now I have this incredible, small team. We’re literally just taking things I know and things they know, and putting it together and we are getting things done. It's invigorating, it's kind of magic.”

*Valentina Di Donato is a journalist who has traveled and reported throughout Italy for nearly a decade. She is interested in telling the stories of women who are the tastemakers of culture and cuisine, humanitarian stories and people who are working on ground breaking projects. *