Ricardo and Pilar Quintero discover profitable area of interest in e-commerce magnificence line

Ricardo and Pilar Olivero. Contributed photo.

In April 2017, Ricardo Quintero stepped down from his role as president of The Movado Group, the global watchmaker, after taking what he considered to be one business trip too many that kept him away from his family.

“After that trip, I felt I didn’t want to be traveling all the time,” he recalled. “I didn’t want to be in meetings all the time — I wanted to take a different path.”

Prior to taking the leadership role at The Movado Group in 2014, Quintero spent four years at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. as senior vice president and global manager of the Clinique brand. He was interested in returning to that industry, but in partnership with his wife Pilar.

“Even though she didn’t work in the beauty business, her insights in terms of products, in terms of product usage, in terms of marketing and insights were incredible,” he continued. “So we said, ‘Why don’t we try to launch a brand together that takes advantage of all of the new technologies that were available to everyone?’ We wanted to combine leveraging digital technologies and starting our own e-commerce business.’”

For Pilar Quintero, the leap into entrepreneurship was a bold step into a new direction.

“I was a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “I was pretty much the one that was holding the fort while Ricardo was working and seeing him pretty much on the weekend before he’d get on the next flight to China or to Europe.”

The Quinteros are natives of Mexico, but for Pilar the seasonal shifts in their Greenwich environment did not always work in her skin’s favor.

“In Mexico City, we don’t have those seasons, so this dryness in the air and the change with air conditioning to heating was really wreaking havoc to my skin,” she said. “I would sit with Ricardo and say, ‘I can’t understand how you can’t tell me exactly what my skin needs and then ask me to use 10 products. I don’t have time to use all these products, and I want something simple that will work.’ That’s when we decided to start the business.”

Ricardo reached out with a colleague from his Clinique days to help them formulate the product line and the couple visited several laboratories before settling on the facility to manufacture their startup Care Skincare product line.

“We narrowed it down to the essentials: having a good cleanser, having a good moisturizer and having a good reair product that would really target signs of aging,” Pilar stated. “We created five products that were multitasking, which means that we would have one product do some of what two or three other products would do.”

The Quinteros’ Care Skincare product line consists of a cleanser and toner, three moisturizers — one gel cream, one water based and the third as a “repair” product with peptide and antioxidants — and what Pilar described as an “eye and lip cream which works for your skin around your eyes and around your mouth.”

Also in the product line is a retinoid serum for nighttime use in promoting cell renewal and a biodegradable towelettes pack.

Care Skincare had a soft launch among the Quinteros’ friends and family members in December 2018 before going to the general public in January 2019.

Ricardo admitted that “it takes time for the brand to get known in a very competitive market,” but 2020 turned out to be a “fantastic” year as the Covid-19 pandemic found the newly-homebound consumers discovering their product. But despite occasional digital hiccups, most notably the changes in the Facebook advertising algorithm, Care Skincare found a receptive audience.

“We have a very loyal and very strong customer base,” Ricardo said. “We’re very proud that we have 35,000 customers and a very strong repeat rate, meaning that customers have not only tried the product once, but they come back for more.”

Ricardo added that Care Skincare also maintains a storefront on Amazon.com, but he is not planning to expand into brick-and-mortar retail “because that requires another set of costs and we would have to sell our products at a much higher price.”

Looking ahead into 2022, the Quinteros are seeking to expand their product line to include a sunscreen — early test products failed to meet their standards. And while Care Skincare has done some Spanish-language advertising, the couple plan has no immediate plans to market to their native Mexico or elsewhere in the world.

“Eventually, we’ll see if we expand to Mexico or to Europe or other countries,” Pilar said. “But as of now, the U.S. is a large enough market to be focused on.”