Who is Nyakio Grieco?

Meet Nyakio Grieco, Co-Founder of thirteen lune and Founder of Relevant. 

About thirteen lune

Thirteen lune is an E-Commerce destination designed specifically to highlight black-owned beauty product brands. Its goal is to inspire the discovery of minority-owned cosmetic brands and change the way these companies are perceived, both by the beauty industry itself, and the wider world. 

Nyakio’s Journey

Nyakio Grieco, the founder of thirteen lune, has been a beauty entrepreneur for nearly 23 years. Her journey began in 2002 with the launch of her first beauty brand, inspired by African beauty secrets passed down through generations. “My grandmother was a coffee farmer, and my grandfather was a medicine man. So, even though I was raised in the U.S. as a first-generation American, I inherited these beauty rituals from my mom and grandmother,” she explains. 

At just eight years old, she visited her grandmother’s coffee farm in Kenya, where she learned to make a coffee and sugar body scrub using ingredients grown on the farm. “That’s when my beauty journey really started,” she recalls.

Nyakio moved to Los Angeles after graduating from the University of Oklahoma, working in the entertainment industry before leaving to build her brand Nyakio, centered on her family’s beauty traditions. Despite the brand's growth, access to capital posed a challenge throughout her journey. "That was always my biggest hurdle," she reflects. Nyakio was ultimately acquired by Unilever in 2017, but Nyakio stayed on board until 2020.

In 2020, during the pandemic, Nyakio saw her brand appearing on lists of Black-owned brands to support. "It was at that moment that I realized there was so much more I could be doing in this industry." 

She and her co-founder, Patrick Herning, launched thirteen lune in December of 2020—a platform that celebrates inclusive beauty, something Nyakio is deeply passionate about. "We wanted to create the first-of-its-kind, truly inclusive beauty destination," she says. 

Business Growth and Revenue Strategies

Nyakio Grieco’s vision for thirteen lune has grown exponentially since its launch. "We started with just 13 brands, and now, almost four years later, we have over 180 brands,” she says. The platform's mission is clear: to support beauty founders of color while also fostering inclusivity. "Ninety percent of the brands we carry are created by people of color from around the globe, creating products for everyone," Nyakio explains.

A core goal of thirteen lune is to dismantle the myth that Black and Brown founders don’t deserve the same consumer audience as others. "We wanted to debunk that myth," Nyakio emphasizes. The remaining 10% of the brands on the platform are dedicated to fostering allyship, a testament to the inclusive and collaborative nature of thirteen lune's mission.

Thirteen Lune operates as a remote-first company, but their flagship store in Los Angeles serves as a central hub. Launched during the height of the pandemic in 2020, the company began with a digital-first approach. 

"We were a company born on Zoom," Nyakio says, but from the start, they knew they wanted to be omni-channel. Just 60 days after launching, they received a call from JCPenney, inviting thirteen lune to become their new inclusive beauty retail partner. This collaboration led to the opening of 609 store-in-store locations within JCPenney, alongside the flagship location on Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Communication and CX

Despite being a small team of around 20 full-time and contract employees, thirteen lune manages to thrive in its remote structure. The flagship store acts as a gathering point, offering opportunities for in-person meetings and team building. Nyakio emphasizes the importance of communication, ensuring that the team stays connected and avoids operating in silos. "We really found a way to operate by being in constant communication," she says, creating a balance between remote work and those valuable in-person interactions.

When it comes to CX, thirteen lune’s approach is simple. “We take a family-first approach,” Nyakio explains. “We want to listen to our consumers, understand where they feel their needs are not being met, and then meet them.”

Innovation and Adaptability

Innovation at thirteen lune is deeply tied to community and discovery, according to Nyakio. "Prioritizing community and people who really evangelize helping to make your beauty shopping more meaningful has been successful for us," she says. 

From day one, the company embraced an omnichannel approach, which Nyakio believes has "helped us to scale immensely over the course of the last three plus years." A key differentiator in their strategy is encouraging customers to discover brands they might not have encountered before. "We invite the consumer to really participate in discovering brands they may never have heard of, and support them both for their efficacy and for making customers feel seen."

Another pillar of thirteen lune's growth has been Nyakio’s second founded beauty brand, Relevant. She describes it as "an in-house incubated brand" that combines her 20 years of experience with a focus on authentic storytelling and ingredients from the earth. "Relevant operates as our highest margin driver," she explains, which has allowed the platform to take bigger risks with unknown brands from around the world. "We give them the chance to join our family and scale as well," she adds, reflecting thirteen lune's commitment to inclusivity and innovation.

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