Vestar VII Portfolio Company Simple Mills Named One of Fast Company’s 2022 Brands That Matter

The brands we trust with our physical and mental well-being play a unique role in our lives. From jeans and make-up, to fitness recovery and fertility, these companies are building relationships with customers beyond the products they’re selling. As Brands That Matter honorees, the following 20 brands demonstrated a commitment to mind and body—whether that’s fighting hunger, making food more sustainable, or preventing skin cancer.

Duolingo has gamified language learning, while also finding new ways to tap into culture. On one hand, its mascot, Duo the Owl, is a TikTok star, while on the other, the brand made a free Ukrainian phrasebook for people to help refugees from that country’s war with Russia. Abercrombie not only ditched the dark mall stores and too-cool vibe for a more inclusive brand, which it baked into its products like Curve Love jeans that take into account a much more diverse variety of body types. Kindbody has worked to take fertility healthcare from a barely whispered issue into a more accessible and inclusive service for all.

Here are the brands leading the way for our mind and body.

ABERCROMBIE & FITCH

Once the domain of shirtless models and dimly lit mall stores, Abercrombie & Fitch has gone through a more recent brand revitalization. That image lift includes combining TikTok creativity and community engagement with social issues through support for The Steve Fund and fellow Brands That Matter honoree The Trevor Project, as well as smart product moves like its Curve Love denim fits, and the launch of a new performance-active brand called YPB.

ABOUT-FACE

About-Face has become a TikTok and fan favorite for fuss-free makeup that is still plenty extra—and that’s by design. Founder Ashley Frangipane, aka singer-songwriter Halsey, developed the Technicolor, texture-forward cosmetics (think chunky glitter, buttery shimmer, and glossy shine) to be as cost conscious as they are extravagant. Most of About-face’s clean, vegan products—from liquid shadow Matte Fluid Eye Paint to the super-creamy Cheek Freak Blush Balm—are priced between $12 and $18, can be easily blended out with fingers, and are designed to offer users versatility in constructing whatever look they want. Following a solid launch in January 2021 as a direct-to-consumer brand, it hit more than 500 Ulta locations and the beauty retailer’s website in June, bringing the products to a wider audience. The company also debuted the even lower-priced but equally Gen Z-savvy AF94 by Halsey line, which launched exclusively at Walmart in July. —Rachel Kim Raczka

COURSERA

Coursera has more than 100 million registered learners, and counts as partners more than 250 leading universities and industry educators—including Yale, AWS, and Microsoft—to which it offers job-relevant courses, hands-on projects, certificates, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The brand’s biggest impact had been aimed at expanding access to education for underserved communities around the world, with initiatives like the American Dream Academy. Undertaken alongside the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, it will serve more than 200,000 underemployed people over three years. The brand has also worked with organizations in Barbados to reskill up to 120,000 pandemic-impacted workers and provide 20,000 scholarships for Barbadian women.

DUOLINGO

Duolingo brings a sense of humor to TikTok with the antics of its owl mascot, but data show it’s serious about language learning. The language learning platform finds ways to tap into culture, with a 56% boost in users studying Italian in the two days after Italy’s song won Eurovision 2021, and 40% more interest in learning Korean in the two weeks after Squid Game’s debut than in the week prior. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine driving interest in learning Ukrainian—and a 577% increase in users learning Ukrainian—Duolingo donated that ad revenue to relief organizations.

ELTAMD SKIN CARE

Long trusted as one of the best sunscreen brands under the, uh, sun, EltaMD has worked over the past year to create brand work that highlight’s lesser-known skin cancer risk. While skin cancer is often associated with fair skin, survival rates for Black Americans who contract it is much lower, and one of the most common sites of skin cancer is the bottom of the foot. Now you know.

IMPOSSIBLE FOODS

A name synonymous with plant-based meat products, Impossible has further expanded its footprint over the past year by releasing faux sausage, chicken nuggets, and pork products, while also appealing to meat eaters. According to Chicago-based analytics company Numerator, nearly 100% of Impossible Foods buyers also buy animal-derived products.

JUST EGG

The brand’s plant-based egg is made from mung beans that use 83% less land, 98% less water, and produces 93% fewer carbon emissions than conventional eggs. This year, Just Egg launched with chains like Caribou Coffee and Peet’s Coffee, and in New York City delis through fellow Brands That Matter honoree Plantega—bringing its plant-based message to breakfast sandwiches across the country.

KINDBODY

The fertility benefits provider aims to help fertility healthcare in the U.S. evolve from fragmented, inequitable, expensive, and inaccessible to the most accessible. This year, Kindbody launched at-home fertility tests for women and men, further expanding access, and more than 10,000 people attended fertility education events hosted by the brand.

LITTLE SPOON

Healthy baby-food-meets-celebrity cult brand Little Spoon has found a way to charm both parents and their little ones. Kids love the food enough to boost sales by 110% in the past year and see the company expand into older kids’ meals and snacks. Its pop cultural cache includes celeb supporters like Serena Williams, Bobbi Brown, Arianna Huffington, and Rebecca Minkoff, as well as a board game called Is This Normal that sold out with zero advertising.

OLAY

Olay has leaned into its brand muscle by helping to get more BIPOC—especially women of color—into STEM fields. Projects in the past year have included the #DecodeTheBias campaign, which sent 1,200 girls to code camp with Black Girls CODE, and a Million Women Mentors partnership, which mentored 1,000 girls interested in STEM. The brand also has committed to having no retouching or distortion of the skin in any of its U.S. ads, including content created by influencers for the brand.

POSHMARK

With more than 80 million global users, the secondhand clothing platform was acquired by South Korean tech company Naver Corp in October for $1.2 billion. In the year preceding the acquisition, the brand built out new features that allow users to shop by trends and repost items they’ve purchased, as well as giving sellers tools for real-time data on their sales and inventory. The brand also partnered with Snap to launch Poshmark Mini, a social shopping experience inside of Snapchat.

SIMPLE MILLS

This is a brand that takes the planet’s health seriously by making regenerative agriculture a central part of its supply chain in an effort to make it more mainstream. Simple Mills designed products like its Sweet Thins and Organic Seed Flour Crackers to include a diverse variety of ingredients—watermelon seed flour, for example—that create market demand for underrepresented crops to enhance agricultural biodiversity. Also, it’s building direct farmer contracts that include technical assistance and financial incentives for adopting regenerative principles.

SUMMERSALT

Summersalt has made its mission dismantling the toxic imagery around swimsuit marketing (and the negative ways it can affect body image). The brand’s products prioritize non-sexualized designs and body-positive advertising. Its “Every Body is a Summersalt Body” campaign focused on body positivity and self-confidence, featuring a diverse set of inspiring women. Participants included Olympian and registered nurse Ilona Maher, models and podcast cohosts Michaela and Hunter McGrady, best-selling novelist Candace Bushnell, WNBA All-Star Betnijah Laney, and others.

THE BODY SHOP

On the heels of the #BlackTikTokStrike, the brand launched its rejuvenated line of Body Butter in North America by engaging a diverse and talented group to develop its ad campaign, which created an original dance aimed at spreading love, body positivity, and joy. The viral dance shone a bright light on creators whose creativity and talents had been marginalized on the platform—and a month after launch, TikTok creator and campaign creative Laila Mohammad won the first-ever VMA award for best viral dance.

THE NORTH FACE

Read our cover story on how filmmaker and adventurer Jimmy Chin is helping the North Face explore important new terrain: a more diverse outdoors.

THE REALREAL

The luxury fashion consignment platform launched its Circular ReSource Lab last year to create impactful solutions to this fashion waste crisis, including the ReCollection upcycling program, in partnership with brands like Balenciaga and Stella McCartney, which turns damaged items into one-of-a-kind pieces.

THERABODY

Though it’s been around since 2009, Therabody (née Theragun) has had a transformative past couple years. The company has expanded its roster of products beyond its flagship massage gun to include everything from new devices to a CBD line. Therabody also has been opening brick-and-mortar retail stores, as well as several Reset locations, billed as “whole-body wellness centers” that feature signature massage and other therapeutic treatments, offering customers a chance to test out the latest products. These include compression therapy boots, designed for massage and post-workout recovery; a handheld facial health tool with micro-current and LED functionality, as well as cold and hot therapy; and a burgeoning period pain relief program delivered via the company’s PowerDot Device. Therabody also has been giving back, including partnerships with Red, to donate 2% of the purchase price of special red devices and certain CBD products to health-focused programs. —Danica Lo

VIRGIN PULSE

People rarely get excited about a health management and benefits navigation platform, but Virgin Pulse has managed to buck that trend and get users engaged. Used by leading companies and national health plans, the company is focused on helping people build health behaviors via its Homebase for Health, which offers live coaching and programs on everything from mindfulness and nutrition to musculoskeletal health and quitting tobacco. By Virgin Pulse’s accounting, 73% of users developed positive daily habits in 2021, and its use of behavioral science, incentives, and personalization led to sustained, continuous engagement of 50%, compared with the industry average of about 5%.

QUAKER

The PepsiCo-owned brand worked over the past year to expand its Quaker Qrece program, which targets malnutrition in Latin America through donations of oat-based food products, and has helped more than 10,000 children in Mexico and Guatemala, aiming to reach 50,000 kids by 2025. The work also has attracted more than 22 million media impression and 340 million unique visitors to its website.

This article is part of Fast Company’s 2022 Brands That Matter awards. Explore the full list of brands whose success has come from embodying their purpose in a way that resonates with their customers.