Gwyneth Paltrow talks retinol, the strategic vision for Goop Beauty

After restructuring, Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is going full throttle on the beauty front.

On Sunday, Goop is launching its first retinol product with its 3x Regenerative Retinol Serum. It will be available on Goop's website and in Goop stores for $150.

The product's name comes from 3x Retinol Complex, a proprietary cocktail of granactive retinoid, encapsulated retinal and encapsulated retinol. There are also Ceramide NP, Benthi plant peptides and a combination of beetroot, adzuki bean and licorice extracts.

Goop recently restructured the company to focus on three growth pillars: fashion, beauty and food. The move resulted in the company laying off 18 percent of its then 216 employees.

Now, Paltrow said, the company is “back in growth mode.”

“After COVID[-19]“We spent quite a bit of time dodging bullets, treading water and being as agile as possible,” Paltrow said. “Last year we saw tremendous growth in our beauty business and that continues this year.”

The brand's fashion brand G.label has grown 51 percent year-to-date and the beauty brand grew 40 percent last year. The company's total revenue is also expected to increase in 2024, the company announced last month.

Paltrow said Goop, which she founded as a newsletter in 2008, is not immune to broader landscape changes in recent years. “2020, 2021, 2022, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank – those were really tough years for us founders,” she said. “For the first time in a few years, I feel energized about the business.”

Paltrow recently closed a $15 million round of funding for Goop Kitchen, a food company currently only in LA. “We’re starting to put things into action again and it’s really working,” she said.

When it comes to beauty, each category expansion is intended to further Goop's broader ethos, and Paltrow said she sees numerous possibilities. “There's the topical part, there's the ingestible part, there's the general health part. These things contribute so much to beauty and our understanding of beauty is about being the best you are,” she said. “There's a real acceptance of the 'you' part.”

Skin care is also important to the company, as evidenced by “all the attention and funding we put into our clinical trials,” she said. The brand's new 3x Retinol Regenerative Serum, for example, has clinical studies that showed 100 percent of subjects saw a reduction in the appearance of deep wrinkles and pores on the face, as well as an improvement in hydration.

“We really just bring our dream products to market,” Paltrow said. “We assess the market and ask where we see empty space. But we only do things we're obsessed with and can't find. Sometimes things take a long time and there are many, many iterations.”

Goop has also dabbled in makeup, launching mascara and tanning gel earlier this year.

Paltrow sees expanding into the retinol space as a major challenge. “The clinical evidence behind retinol is so compelling. “It's obviously working very well and I'm impatient,” she said of her own demands. “For a long time there were no clean retinols on the market and we wanted to play with versions that wouldn't overly redden or irritate the skin.”