Denver skincare brand Erleia expands nationwide with Natural Grocers launch

When Ada Chen launched her skincare brand Erleia on Black Friday in 2020, it marked the beginning of a major pandemic pivot.

Amid the height of lockdown, Chen was navigating a career transition, leaving her California tech job and acting as primary caregiver for her late father, who had Parkinson’s disease.

That intense nine-month period of caregiving reshaped Chen’s perspective, sparking a mission centered on self-care, empathy and accessible sustainability.

Coming from a lower-middle-class background, Chen knew firsthand how exclusive the beauty industry could feel. She set out to build a business that defied standard consumer packaged goods (CPG) practices – offering plastic-free, effective and affordable skincare without unnecessary markup or wasteful packaging.

Fast forward six years, and the Denver-based brand has evolved from its initial offerings into a 15-item line featuring solid lotion bars, acne sticks and facial oils packaged in paper tubes.

The products started as face oils, but a friend who loved them suggested turning the corresponding formulas into sticks.

“The point is that they treat the things you want them to treat, and it does the moisturizing on top,” Chen said.

She started talking with Natural Grocers in 2024 and in April 2025, the chain gave her the green light for a summer launch.

That sent her scrambling to fulfill the order, hand-packing boxes to ship to each store.

Today, 12 of Erleia’s 15 products are stocked across all 180-plus Natural Grocers locations nationwide as well as on Amazon, Grove Collaborative and its own direct-to-consumer website.

“If you can put one formula in a paper tube, you can put many formulas in a paper tube,” Chen said, pointing to her vision for driving broader change across the CPG industry. “There’s no reason bigger brands couldn’t do it.”

The brand’s trajectory recently earned Chen national recognition – she was selected as a 2026 Tory Burch Foundation Fellow, making her one of 120 women founders chosen this year.

As part of the fellowship, Chen participates in peer mastermind groups, strategy sessions and advisory consultations aimed at scaling sustainable businesses. The 2026 cohort is working toward the foundation’s collective target of generating more than $1 billion in economic impact by 2030.

While navigating growth, Chen remains focused on maintaining a self-funded, eco-friendly model despite supply chain challenges such as tariffs on raw ingredients and packaging costs.

As Erleia eyes expansion into local co-ops and zero-waste markets, Chen’s call to action for consumers is straightforward: Support women-owned brands by buying their products right off the shelf.

“The best way to keep us growing and get us into more stores is to go buy,” she said.