Haléau, the debut brand from former Gritty Pretty founder and beauty influencer Eleanor Pendleton, reached six figures in under a month – the result of three years, $200,000 and a few ‘calculated risks’.
When Eleanor Pendleton launched her beauty brand Haléau in October, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She’d have been happy with 10 orders of her flagship product, the Pearl Baume, but within minutes of the website going live, thousands of orders began rolling in.
“It was just like ding, ding, ding,” she says. “Already there were customers sitting there an hour early. I started crying – I was so overwhelmed.”
Within three weeks, Pendleton says sales at Haléau have crossed six figures – a milestone that marks the beginning of a new chapter for the influencer and former editor, who spent nearly two decades building a career in beauty publishing and content.
Pendleton first entered the industry as a teenage intern at Cosmopolitan (under Go To Skincare founder Zoë Foster-Blake), commuting four hours a day from her grandmother’s social housing flat on the New South Wales Central Coast to Sydney’s Park Street offices. “I didn’t have any family connections or financial support, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” she says. “I just worked hard and hoped to impress the right people.”
After editorial roles at InStyle and Famous, she launched Gritty Pretty in 2014, one of Australia’s first digital-only beauty magazines. The publication grew quickly, securing international cover stars like Khloe Kardashian, Hailey Bieber and Shay Mitchell. But after a decade running the title, Pendleton decided to pivot. “I’d been working behind the scenes on Haléau for two years,” she says. “I had two young children and knew something had to give. I couldn’t keep running one business while building another.” (Pendleton says she fielded acquisition offers for Gritty Pretty, but ultimately decided its database of engaged readers would prove lucrative when it came to launching Haléau. Later, she’d be proven right).
She knew she wanted to move from a service-based business to a product-based business, and with her expertise and connections in the beauty industry, Haléau became the product of that shift. The brand launched with a single hero item, the Pearl Baume, a highlighter formulated with pearl powder, which Pendleton describes as a “skin-first cosmetic”.
“So many cosmetics still contain cheap synthetics,” she says. “It didn’t make sense to me that women would invest in skincare and then undo it with their makeup.”
Pendleton self-funded the brand, investing close to $200,000 to bring the first product to market (though she says she has one other partner in the business). With two children and another on the way, it was a risky investment – but a calculated one, she says. “I had a community of 150,000 people from Gritty Pretty who already trusted me, so I wasn’t launching into the void. But it was still a big commitment.”
Over three years, she worked to find manufacturers, leaning on industry stalwarts like Emma Lewisham (of the eponymous beauty brand) and Elle Ferguson (behind Elefect tanning products) for advice.
“People value honesty. They want to know who’s behind a brand and how it was made.”
Eleanor Pendleton – Haléau founder
“There’s an easy way to do this,” she says. “You can white-label a formula and buy packaging off the shelf, but I didn’t want that.” She spent thousands trying to formulate the right casing for her highlighting balm using recycled ocean plastics, before having to ditch that for a zinc-alloy metal blend that withstood the drop-test (how well a product can hold up when it falls to the ground). The custom formulations and moulds meant she had to bring in an engineer to design the compact’s hinge and clasp.
The result was a metal, pearl-inspired compact that weighs roughly the same as an iPhone, intentionally designed to feel like a keepsake. “It was modeled off one of my necklaces, a baroque pearl,” she says. “I liked that it wasn’t perfect. It felt more organic and human, which is how I think about beauty.”
Pendleton, who has nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram alone, made a deliberate choice not to be the face of the brand. “From the start, I knew I didn’t want to front the campaign,” she says. “But I did want to cast someone who was Eurasian, because I never saw anyone who looked like me in beauty advertising growing up.”
Since launch, Haléau’s first run has almost sold out and a second production order is in progress. She attributes the brand’s success to a ‘feel-good’ product, but also the company’s marketing strategy, which focused on transparency. Pendleton herself documented Haléau’s three-year build on her Substack and shared the realities of launching a beauty brand. “I wanted people to know what it actually takes,” she says. “Every time something went wrong, it cost thousands of dollars. I didn’t want to present this false narrative that it was easy.”
That openness, she believes, helped Haléau build immediate traction with consumers. “People value honesty,” she says. “They want to know who’s behind a brand and how it was made.”
Looking ahead, Pendleton says Haléau’s working on a new holiday campaign that swaps traditional sales for customer rewards. “We’re not doing Black Friday or Cyber Monday, it doesn’t fit with the brand,” she says. “Instead, we’re gifting customers a handmade blue macramé bag with their orders.”
The product roadmap also extends into 2026, with planned releases including Pearl Powder, Pearl Liquid, Mother of Pearl Body Lotion and Golden Glaze Body Oil. Pendleton says the goal is steady, sustainable growth rather than rapid expansion. “I’ve seen businesses scale too quickly and not be able to keep up,” she says. “I’d rather do it properly.”
Haléau remains self-funded, though Pendleton is open to investment from the right partner – and at the right time. “It would have to be someone who brings more than capital,” she says. “For now, I’m focused on getting the next suite of products to market and refining what we’ve already built.”
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