Body Care Brand Curie Rebrands as Mass-Market Personal Care Premiumizes

With Target being compared to Whole Foods and Walmart bringing more than 70 beauty brands into its stores over the past year, mass-market personal care is becoming more sophisticated. Brands have to look the part. This premiumization is also extending to younger demographics, where brands like California Naturals are launching dedicated kids' lines to capture modern families.

Eight years after launching as a direct-to-consumer clean deodorant brand, Curie is updating its positioning and design, not its formulas, as it enters its next phase of growth. It’s unveiling a sweeping gender-neutral rebrand centered on “clean performance,” a concept it believes better reflects both its evolution beyond deodorant and changes in how consumers approach wellness, movement and community.

The update, completed over more than nine months with Gander, the creative agency that has worked with Magic Spoon, Graza and Banza, and costing a six-figure amount, according to an estimate provided to Glossy, replaces Curie’s existing identity with a bolder, movement-inspired design featuring an italicized wordmark and abstract Strider icon intended to reinforce the brand’s “clean performance” positioning. Its 10 signature scents and ingredient formulations remain unchanged.

“We wanted the outsides to match the insides,” says founder and CEO Sarah Moret, noting that Curie is an “eight-figure, profitable business.” “We’ve grown, our business has grown, our customers have grown with us. It was time for the brand to catch up to where the business has gone.” She adds, “A lot of times clean kind of translates as soft. We wanted more bold and strong and confident than soft.”

Curie’s revamp comes as consumers increasingly gravitate to products that combine clean ingredients with performance and convenience. According to data from search intelligence firm Spate, deodorant spray is among the fastest-growing search trends, and demand for aluminum-free deodorant remains strong. Rather than compete on clean and aluminum-free formulas alone, which have become ubiquitous, Curie is differentiating around efficacy and active lifestyles or what it calls clean performance for “humans in motion.” This shift toward specialized underarm care is part of a broader market evolution, where brands like Baudie are ditching traditional skincare to focus entirely on underarm wellness.

“Movement has always been part of our DNA. I was a marathon runner. We hear again and again that our customers are active. They’re busy. They’re chasing kids. They’re training for their first half marathon or squeezing in a workout class in the morning,” says Moret. “We had a realization that, quite frankly, our brand identity wasn’t clear enough.”

Walmart offered feedback throughout the rebranding process, particularly on packaging hierarchy and merchandising decisions. The retailer had a vested interest in the outcome. Curie says it has the highest repeat-purchase rate in its category at Walmart, where it’s sold in the retailer’s naturals section. Curie is currently in 4,300 stores.

Generally priced from about $12 to $20, Curie occupies the premium end of mass-market body care. Peer brands including Native, Schmidt’s and Wild were all acquired by consumer goods giants as the conglomerates sought exposure to growing deodorant and body care segments and consumers seeking better-for-you products.

“We wanted the outsides to match the insides.”

Mike McVicar, co-founder and creative director at Gander, emphasizes that his belief in Curie’s products shaped the creative process. “I’ve tried every natural deodorant, and they’ve never worked until Curie,” he says. “That truly is the biggest inspiration when you’re working on a brand, to believe in it and see the vision.”

According to Crunchbase, Curie has raised around $2 million across four rounds, and investors have included Joyance Partners, Social Starts, Breakout Ventures, Breakout Labs and Cantos. Prior to founding Curie, Moret worked in venture capital at Crosscut Ventures and Formation 8.

Rather than leveraging the rebrand to chase aggressive retail expansion, Moret says Curie’s near-term strategy is to deepen existing retail relationships. In 2025, the brand rolled out to around 1,000 Target stores nationwide, but its products are no longer listed on Target’s website. “There is such a huge opportunity still with Walmart,” explains Moret, remarking that Curie will launch new retailers “down the line.”

To drive awareness, Curie is pursuing experiential marketing and community-driven activations, including its partnership with National Women’s Soccer League club San Diego Wave FC. Curie also has a partnership with Equinox and participates in race-day sampling programs and hometown wellness events in San Diego. Moret says the focus is more on real-life interactions and less on acquiring customers via Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Curie has multiple body care launches planned over the next 18 to 24 months as it continues expanding beyond deodorant. Forthcoming fragrances will be developed with Ann Gottlieb, a consultant who has been integral in creating Curie’s scents to date and has created fragrances for iconic brands like Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Axe and Marc Jacobs. As consumer demand for sophisticated, accessible scents grows—a trend also driving influencer-led launches like Funmi Monet's new fragrance brand Influxious at Sephora—Curie is ensuring its future scent portfolio remains highly competitive.

Throughout the rebranding process, Moret stresses Curie deliberately avoided defining itself against larger competitors. “There’s a tendency to be like, ‘We want to be the blank of deodorant,’ and we just resisted that at every step of the way,” she says. “No, I don’t want to be the Nike of personal care. We want to be the Curie of personal care. We put the blinders on. We want to make our own stamp on the world.”

Ultimately, Moret views the refresh less as a cosmetic redesign than an investment in Curie’s future. “The brand you see today helped us acquire our first several hundred thousand customers,” says Moret. “This new brand is going to help us reach a million more.”