Founder on Founder: Sarah Creal & Alec Batis

Written by LAURA REGENSDORF

Photos courtesy of Sarah Creal & Alec Batis

Some people helicopter into the beauty game, launching brands in order to snag a piece of the ever-growing pie. Others have earned their stripes—and then some—with a fluency in formulation and a long-range vision that set them heads above the rest. Before creating the skin care brand Sweet Chemistry, Alec Batis logged decades in the industry, working as a chemist and later leading marketing for brands like NARS. Sarah Creal’s name is now front and center on her makeup line, but her well of insider experience runs deep, with influential roles at Bobbi Brown, Tom Ford, and Victoria Beckham Beauty, which she cofounded and led as its CEO. Now taking big swings in their fifties, Creal and Batis recently reunited at VIOLET GREY’s New York headquarters, two floors above The Madison Store. Here, they compare notes on the childhood experiences that vaulted them into the business, their unsung wellness staples, and the pros and cons of a namesake brand.

ALEC BATIS: I initially assumed we’d meet on Zoom because I figured you're in London or something: She is a jet-setter. But I’ve dolled myself up. I put on Sarah Creal Back of the Cab.

SARAH CREAL: If I get a chance to see you in the flesh, I'm going to take it!

VIOLET GREY: Speaking of which, what products do you call in from each other's brands?

SC: Anytime I'm asked what products I like to use, I always mention yours. They actually work! I love the Lipid-Cream. The other thing I absolutely love is the emulsified oil. What is that one called?

AB: You noticed that it’s emulsified oil. Of course—you're in product development.

SC: You got it, baby.

AB: Actually the Oil-Serum was an accident. I’m not into the carrier oils, like the grapeseeds of the world—but I like the polyphenol oils along with L-ascorbate, CoQ10, the Matrikynes peptides, and pure ceramides. My skin needs a full 3% ceramides, but at that level ceramides sink to the bottom.

SC: You had to put in an emulsifier to get everything to be happy. I talk about formulations like a cocktail party: You’ve got to make sure everybody’s having a good time in that bottle. And sometimes you need to add in that rando guest just to make sure the conversation goes well.

AB: It became almost like a gelee, but then it absorbed really fast and didn’t slip everywhere and just cushioned the skin. I was like, oh, this is really good—but I was worried people would wonder, “How come this oil is not drippy?”

SC: Next time somebody asks you that, you should just say, “Because I’m a genius.” Because seriously, it is genius. For me at 56, the total danger zone is the décolleté. I slather on my own Moisture Source first to get water into the skin, and then I follow with the emulsified oil. Nothing else gives me an instant impact. I’m like a glowy princess.

AB: You have the best product names. I’m a little self-conscious about it, but sometimes, as I mentioned, I use a tiny bit of mascara to get a little definition. I try to make it discreet and not overdone. I used to buy whatever here and there, but I was always paranoid about transfer or smudging as the day went on. When I saw Back of the Cab—made by a longtime product developer who knows product for different skin types, age groups, demographics, formulation—I was like, I want to try that. Now, I never check myself [for smudging] in the mirror anymore.

VG: What were some of your early encounters with beauty products?

AB: My interest in beauty comes from a place of extreme insecurity—this desire to look as young and as good as possible, for as long as possible. Through therapy, I learned some of the reasons why it’s been so important to me. My grandma was a poor rice farmer's daughter in Japan, and she was arranged married to a Japanese man who brought her to a strawberry farm in British Columbia, where she had the eight children that she was supposed to. She taught my mom, “Your job is to be a possession of a man, so you have to look a certain way.” When my dad cheated and left, my mom said to me, “Well, it’s my fault because I’m 35, 36, so I’m no longer beautiful.” Even though I’m male, I identified with her. One day, she said, “People are going to tell you that it’s what’s on the inside that matters. And it’s important—but it’s really more the outside. Otherwise love will leave.” So I went to college to do my chemistry degree, and then went to L’Oréal Groupe. I was going to figure out how to look as young and attractive as possible for the rest of my life.

SC: Generational trauma is real. You carry it until you figure out how to not carry it anymore. Mine is really boring compared to that—and it really was about boredom. I grew up in this small town in northwestern Pennsylvania, in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest, and there was just nothing to do, literally. There was this really big rock in the woods, and I would lay on it and stare up at the sky. Occasionally an airplane would go across, and I’d think, “Someday I am going to be on that airplane.” Basically, I’m getting the fuck out of here. My dad was an architect, and I would go with him to work on Saturdays. There was a five-and-dime next door, and it was transportive to me. One day, I had hours to kill and I was looking at these mascaras, and all of the ingredient listings were identical. My 13-year-old brain at the time realized the difference had to be the brush. I was like, “I want that job.” It took me another 10 years to realize that was called product development.

VG: What were your early product obsessions?

SC: A CoverGirl eye shadow quad, where they actually showed you where to put the purple, the pink, the lavender shimmer, and the cobalt blue. And yes, you were meant to wear them all at the same time. Those were some hot looks.

AB: Mine was Differin—adapalene 0.3 was my entry. I was very acneic. People used to say I had perfect skin, but if I did not use adapalene day and night, it would just be oils. Adapalene is technically the retinoid that’s positioned for acne. In my 20s and 30s, I started to transfer over to tretinoin, thinking it was going to be anti-aging, but I found I was really sensitive. I have used adapalene 0.3% day and night for 40 years. It’s turned from acne to anti-aging.

SC: That’s why you look 12. You’re an off-label badass.

VG: What do you remember about beauty advertisements growing up? How were brands speaking to you?

SC: I distinctly remember when Estée Lauder hired Paulina Porizkova. I could be wrong about this, but in my world, the first campaign they put her in was for their new self-tanner. I was probably 14, 15 at this time, and I was already working at this place called the Watson Home, which was an old ladies’ nursing home. I was a waitress there morning, noon, and night on the weekends—hot job. But I was making some money, so I would go to the mall and I remember seeing this campaign. To me, I’d never seen somebody like Paulina Porizkova in my life. Her beauty was so striking to me, and self-tanner was also new out of the box. As a pale girl, I was like, I’m buying it. That moment is seared into my brain.

AB: I just was in love with the supermodels. Any ad that any of them was in was just like, “I want to be that.” It was so aspirational. I had just transferred into marketing from the lab in the mid-1990s, so that was the heyday. Then I went to Victoria’s Secret Beauty as the third employee. I was working on some of the Body by Victoria campaigns, and we were retouching these girls. I remember working on this one model: We changed her eyes, we changed ears, we changed her nose, we changed her waist, we changed her boobs. We thought we were doing her a favor. Later on, with a lot of therapy, I remember thinking, One day I’ll apologize to her.

My favorite was Christy Turlington. But back then we didn’t talk about the person of Christy Turlington. We just talked about how perfect and symmetrical her features were. We’re trying to evolve that, but at the same time, there is an aspect of looking your best and being aspirational. When we’re choosing models, they may be older. It used to be, like, “No freaking way are we going to choose someone like that.” But at the same time, there’s still an idea of who we choose from the group, who has a certain look, a certain air.

SC: Don't even get me started. Women are fucked! They’re being screwed by society in general. If you get work done, then you’re so vain. If you don’t do anything, then you’ve let yourself go. You are damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t. This is why I throw out all of this with my brand. I don’t talk about aging. I don’t care what you do. Obviously I am selling products—because I do think part of my purpose on this earth is to help people, and the mode through which I am able to do that is product development. I’ve been given a gift. I’ve worked at it, but it’s also something innate. It just happens to be the train I can invite people to get on, to take them to a place of greater self-acceptance and self-agency. You do you.

VG: Is there a snapshot moment when you knew you were on the right path?

SC: I was lucky enough to have an amazing woman, Annie Carullo, as my boss when I was at Prescriptives in the 1990s. She is a genius in terms of product. She is an incredible teacher—because product development is really an apprenticeship. The slang term for product development is a fingertips person. You have to be able to evaluate formulas on the inside of your arm next to a chemist, working side by side. She taught me so much, but she also was so secure in her own ability that she was never intimidated by any ideas I would come up with.

One day, I went into her office with a little white jar of paint. I said to her, “What if we made a product that made you look better to you and look better to me? Your skin looks smoother and has a glow.” She was like, “Is it a lotion?” I said not really. “Is it a foundation?” I was like, “Definitely not. I think of it as if your skin had a cloaking device, making it more even and uniform.” She was like, “All right, Sarah. I’m going to send you over to Andy Bevacqua, who’s in charge of new raw materials at the Estée Lauder R&D lab, and you tell him this idea and see what he says.” He turned out to be just the nicest guy. I was so young, like 27. He met with me and said, “It’s so interesting you should say that because I’ve just recently come across a five-sided pearl. I have no idea what to do with it.” This is where product development and chemistry come together, and it can be next-level. That became the first optical diffuser. It was the first time that anybody had created something that was blurring and colorless. I had an idea, but I didn't know how to execute it. Annie let me run and also guided me. I was able to bring that product to market, and it was called Magic. That ended up doing $25 million in business—it was huge. In that moment, I was like, I think I’ve got something here. A little bit of talent, a little bit of vision.

AB: I was known as the opinionated chemist. The marketers hated to come out to the lab in Jersey. They’d all be in their Manolo Blahniks, clickety-clack, and in the black town cars. I was always telling them, “You should talk about the technology like this,” or “You should put it in this kind of packaging.” Somebody noticed and said, “We want you to come to marketing.” I asked about the salary because I didn’t want to take a cut, and they were like, “Oh, you’ll make double.” I remember doing a concept for a product, and they asked me to go to Paris—there’s this thing called the salle de confrontation. It was kind of like the United Nations, and all the countries’ marketing people would sit around. The goal is you talk through your whole concept, and all the countries tear you down—confrontation. If you’re left standing by the end, then you have something good. I was petrified. I gave the presentation, and I got a really great response and I was like, “Okay, I’m in the right spot.”

SC: I also have my own salle de confrontation story. It didn’t end nearly as well!

VG: You each recently launched your own brands. I’m curious about the pros and cons of using your own name. Obviously someone like Bobbi Brown lost the ability to use hers.

SC: John Varvatos—there’s a long list. My lawyer gave me the risks of doing it with your name or not. For me, it came down to the fact that I could not get investment at the beginning. I went to all of these funds, and I really thought I wasn’t going to have a hard time getting investment with my background, frankly. I was like, I’ve done Victoria Beckham as the cofounder and CEO. Prior to that, I’d done Tom Ford’s line with Charlotte Tilbury. Before that, I was with Bobbi Brown for five years as both her head of product development and head of marketing. I’ve been to a couple rodeos and was successful at it. I understood that only 2% of funding went to female-founded companies, but nevertheless, I thought I would be part of that 2%. And I was not. The minute I mentioned that my brand was going to be for babes 40+, it was a no. “Sarah, older women just don’t really want to look at other older women”—like, wanting me to collude with them. I was like, “No, I don’t agree.” I put my own money in, as much of my own savings as I felt like I could do without feeling like I was going to be eating cat food at 75. I did the branding, all of the package development, all of the design. Believe me, I had some self-talks that I used to have with those other founders, which was: You get one shot to launch a brand, and you’ve got to do it right.

I basically partied till the money ran out. I went back to my ex-husband. The first time I’d gone to him, it was just a flat-out no. He was like, “Listen, I can’t even help you. I’m in the music industry. I have no idea what beauty is about.” I was like, “I know what I’m doing in beauty—I just need the money.” So then I went back to him several months later and was like, “I am really now begging you: You have to jump in the pool.” A week later, he comes back to me and says, “I’m going to give you some money, but it’s on one condition: You have to call it by your name.” At first I was like, “How sweet.” But I knew there was a business angle. He said, “In the last week I’ve done my own research, and there are a lot of brands out there that are five letter words that don’t mean anything. And the reason why is because the person behind it has no experience in beauty. They come from data, they come from PR. People aren’t going to know who the hell Sarah Creal is, but they can Google you and understand that immediately.” That was a pretty good answer—not bad advice from a music guy. My daughter’s last name is not mine, so I also kind of feel like, you know what? If this brand gets to be a behemoth, which it’s going to, and somebody wants to buy it and my name goes with it, as long as it still stands for what I want it to stand for, I’m okay with it.

AB: Plus it’s just a good name.

SC: That’s my dad being the architect. He told me, “Your mom named your older sister Hope, so I got to name you. I always just knew: Sarah Creal, five letters and five letters. If you ever needed to use it, it would look great.” Isn’t that funny? He’s passed away now, but I think he’s cheering me on.

AB: I also considered naming it [after me]. I actually started to work with Annie Carullo in 2000. I was the chemist, and it was Batis Skin Laboratories. I presented her, and we started going to seek NDAs. Then, after September 11th, everything kind of stopped. I just went back to my thing. As a consultant, I’d worked with founders and seen how hard they worked for so many years and then very few—

SC: Very few end up owning their own brands. This is the dirty secret of founders and investors.

AB: Exactly. I was partnered with Xylyx Bio, the biotech company that came out of Columbia. They’re really the Matrikynes peptides, and I’m the formula. It didn’t feel right for me to use my name when we’re equal. I noticed that science-based brands were presented as cold and clinical, and Xylyx is really about repairing damaged organs to basically eliminate the organ transplant wait list. I was like, they’re very warm and loving and good. [The technology] not intimidating—it’s life-affirming. So I was like, Sweet Chemistry. And chemistry is also the energy between people. When I think about marketing tactics used in the industry, which haven’t really been great for people, I’m like, “Maybe we can rethink that.”

SC: That phrase, “The fish rots from the head”—it's true of companies. You should be able to tell what the head of the company is like by meeting the most junior person on the team.

AB: Sometimes, when I get down on myself for being older doing this—

SC: You do? God, call me when that happens because I am like, “Fuck, this is awesome.” I really believe you do things when you’re ready.

AB: It makes a difference in the products. People think, “Okay—just go to a contract manufacturer, and you can switch out a couple of things.” But everything you learn over the years of trial and error, that makes the product much, much better.

VG: It’s interesting that you brought up Paulina because she’s back at Estée Lauder. Where do you see this world that you’re now steering?

SC: I think there’s still a ton of tokenism. Companies recognize the wallet power of Gen X and boomers. That results in calling in somebody famous from the 1990s: “Let’s make a campaign about this person.” But if you scratch the surface, nothing has really changed, in my opinion. I put that we're for over 40 on the box, and I made that decision early, early on before I had any investment. I was like, I know there’s going to come a moment where somebody’s going to pressure me to be everything to everyone because they think that’s a bigger pie. But actually what we’re seeing is that specificity is going to win.

AB: Taking a stand.

SC: I only test on women 40-plus and I only photograph women 40-plus, and I just don’t veer from that. That, to me, is everything that I personally can do to be authentic and stand for what I’m standing for. I see other people coming, but I don’t think they’re really committed.”

AB: You expect that when someone says, “Babes over 40”—I don’t know—that it’s going to look kind of...

SC: Cheesy. Or sad. The tenor in beauty in general over the age of 40 is like, “Poor you. You’re a lost cause. Don’t embarrass your children, for God’s sake.”

AB: But when I saw the formulas you were coming out with and how you were trying to really maximize the quality of skin, all of a sudden it’s like, “It’s not apologetic women—it’s fabulous women.”

SC: I always say, it’s not a consolation prize. It’s a reward for all the steps you’ve taken to get here. I’m a New York City badass bitch, and I want to make products for my co-bitches.

AB: I feel like our industry has historically presented one dimension of beauty, but chasing after that idea wasn’t making me happy. There’s this thing called meaning in life that’s really important, so I started to think about social-impact work—working with teen artists and young people in the sciences who otherwise don’t get support. We do 1% of sales to these kinds of organizations as this concept of what we call “whole beauty.” The industry has a long way to go, but there are brands and founders pushing for it.

SC: I’ve walked that tightrope myself. We worked with Planned Parenthood, and that’s a lightning rod. A lot of people didn’t like it: “Stay in your beauty lane. Stick to mascara.” I was like, “Nope, I’m not going to. And if you buy Red v. Wade lipstick, you too will be donating.” They say if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

VG: What would you say is your beauty secret? Or what gives you peace of mind?

AB: People think I’m going to say a moisturizer or a peptide, but it’s flossing. That’s my most important beauty tip. Right now I’m using Cocokind. I love it—it’s colorful. The breakdown of food over time causes the degradation of your gums, and they’ve proven the connection between oral health and physical health of the whole body. Your skin is what sits on top of all this tissue in your oral cavity, so the more you can make it remain plump and healthy, the better.

SC: Mine is my PEMF mat by HigherDose. It’s an investment, I’m not going to lie, but it basically hijacks your brain waves in 22 minutes. It’s also loaded with crystals. The thing weighs a ton. I have it open in my bedroom and never roll it up. There are four settings, from relaxation—like a heartbeat away from comatose—to amped up. It really, really works. I feel totally rejuvenated.