This article is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Beauty Edit newsletter, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis, the Beauty Trend Tracker and Leadership Advice, sign up for Vogue Business membership here.
When British makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes shared a sneak peek of one of the shades for her soon-to-be-released new lip and cheek product on TikTok, she asked her followers to suggest a name for it. The comment section flooded with over 1,600 suggestions, from “Cherub” to “Dahlia” and “Après Ski”.
Hughes, who has worked with celebrities including Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber and Kate Bosworth, launched her own line of cosmetics KJH.Brand last September. It started with a single product — a three-piece $75 Hyper Shine High Lite Kit available through the brand’s own website, consisting of a luminous pigment pot (available in four shades), mixing serum and a brush — and the lip and cheek pigment will follow later this year. The hope is to tap into fans of Hughes’s educational social media content, while using their feedback to develop the offer.
Hughes is not the only makeup artist eyeing the opportunity to develop and sell products. Artist-led beauty lines are booming amid a growing backlash against celebrity-backed or founded brands. Aside from industry titans like Pat McGrath and Charlotte Tilbury, mid-level players such as Half Magic (the beauty brand created by Donni Davy, the makeup artist behind HBO’s hit series Euphoria), Danessa Myricks and Sculpted by Aimee Connolly are teetering on the precipice of mainstream success. Meanwhile, newer indie brands — including Hughes’s KJH.Brand, Jo Baker’s BakeUp Beauty and Nikki DeRoest’s Ciele Cosmetics — are gaining traction.
“Consumers are looking for the type of authority and authenticity that comes from a founder who has honed their craft over many years,” says Michelle Liu, general manager of Half Magic.
For smaller artist-led brands, however, expanding can pose a challenge. Distribution is an important decision: a predominantly wholesale model brings the risks and rewards of being stocked in larger retailers. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels allow more control, but are increasingly competitive — begging the question of how best to grow while maintaining a creative niche.
Partnering with retail giants: Pros and cons
Large retailers like Sephora, Ulta or Target can provide access to new markets and consumers, and drive footfall bolstered by attractive reward schemes and discount incentives. Half Magic is stocked in over 1,400 Ulta stores. “Retail partnerships are an important part of our strategy because our products are so visual and tactile — consumers fall in love when they touch, feel and try them in person,” says Liu.
SPF-infused makeup line Ciele Cosmetics used investment from private equity firm Sonoma Brands to fund its launch into Sephora US in August 2023. The two-year exclusive deal saw the brand enter 270 stores and online with a curated offering of skin tints, face powders and a liquid blush. By the fourth quarter of this year, the line will be sold in all of Sephora’s US stores. It was critical to team up with the “top retailer for beauty”, says DeRoest, who says Sephora acts as a “sounding board” to help her toe the line between creating artistry-driven products and appealing to the average in-store shopper.
The need to tightly curate what goes into stores can be a challenge, especially for the brands led by a strong creative vision rather than designing to appeal to the masses.
Self-taught makeup artist Myricks rolled out her cosmetics line on Sephora’s US site in 2021, entering physical stores the same year on an endcap — a narrow display at the end of an aisle — which allowed for a maximum of 10 SKUs. “We had to decide out of our 400-plus SKUs, what are the 10 that represent our brand? That’s really, really hard. Some shades we got right, some shades I had no idea would be the top-selling colours because on our website, the more dynamic, colourful and shiniest sold first, but in the world of Sephora it was the exact opposite,” says Myricks, founder of her eponymous beauty brand.
There are other risks to consider: not least the hidden costs of wholesaling. “Many underestimate the costs of remaining listed with these retail partners, whether that is engaging in joint marketing activities or the recruitment of sales staff. Retailers obviously take a margin for selling their products and payment terms can be around 90 days,” warns Fiona Glen, director of projects at beauty brand consultancy firm The Red Tree.
DeRoest agrees that the costs make it important to move slowly. “There are a lot of regions I want to be in but let’s get really stable where we are now and then we can look at expansion. That’s partly just to be smart but also financially, it’s very expensive, so you need to find a balance and not grow too quickly when you need to establish yourself first.”
The DTC route
DTC is also expensive, though proponents say it’s a good route to market for artist-led brands, allowing them to retain creative control.
Hughes says she wants to focus on sustainable growth for KJH.Brand, leaning into the educational, chatty GRWM-style content she’s known for on Instagram and TikTok. The plan is to slowly expand by dropping products or shade extensions one at a time, allowing consumer feedback to drive development. Next will be separate pigment pots so customers can mix and match shades rather than buying the whole kit each time, before the multi-purpose pigment for lips and cheeks arrives later this year.
She’s happy to keep the business small. “I like being able to see the emails coming through from customer service. I like being able to have that one-on-one dialogue with the person purchasing this product. The kit needs the element of education to go with it, showing what you do with the serum, how much of the highlight pigment to use for the look you’re trying to achieve,” says Hughes. The educational aspect of the kit would have been lost if she launched into a retail store and would rely on one-to-one training with store associates to properly communicate to shoppers how to use the kit as she intended, she adds. “I think it was the right move for us, we’ve broken even and we’re profitable in less than a year of business.”
It’s also a reliable route to manageable growth, advises Glen. “The online DTC channel allows colour cosmetics brands the opportunity to understand how their brand is resonating with consumers prior to investing further in aspects such as stock inventory, trade marketing and merchandising solutions.”
DTC has its own challenges, however. It is much harder to build awareness among a broad consumer base, or test out new markets. “The biggest challenge for a DTC beauty brand is presence in a vast marketplace,” says Katie Baron, content director at trends forecasting agency Stylus. “Thousands of new beauty brands launch every year, at the same time that the cost of customer acquisition via social media channels has become prohibitively pricey.”
Still, one of DTC’s biggest advantages is that it allows brands to build a very clear identity and community — and retrieve feedback directly from customers.
“The benefit of being an artistry-based brand is that knowledge lends itself to activities such as masterclasses, tutorials and Q&As, either in real life or digitally,” points out The Red Tree’s Glen. “Ask your community what kind of products they like, give them early access to the products that they’re launching. This will help to mean that the products launched will be in line with consumers expectations. Take your community on the journey with you.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
