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.
Patrick Ta Beauty is shifting gears.
On Monday, the five-year-old brand will launch its first liquid foundation as it picks up the pace of product development. It has also invested $1 million in its first out-of-home campaign, ‘Beauty That Brings You Out’, celebrating first-generation, American key opinion leaders across LA, Miami and New York.
The moves are taking place under a new leadership team, appointed last year. Kimberly Villatoro, previously vice president and general manager of Estée Lauder-owned brands Smashbox and Glamglow in North America, has joined as CEO, while Jacqueline Barrett, ex-VP of strategic consumer marketing for Fenty Beauty, is now senior vice president of marketing. Co-founder and celebrity makeup artist Patrick Ta continues to oversee the creative direction and product innovation, while fellow co-founders Rima and Avo Minasyan continue to help shape the strategic direction and vision of the brand.
Under its new leadership and fuelled by Ta’s celebrity artistry and strong community ties, the brand is going from strength to strength. Industry sources say revenue sat between $30 million and $50 million in 2023, and data consultancy Launchmetrics reports that the brand’s total media impact value reached £112 million in 2024 — up 35 per cent on 2023. An undisclosed minority investment from Stride Consumer Partners, whose portfolio also includes Tatcha and Skinfix, in 2022 has been used to support product development to meet rising demand, Villatoro tells Vogue Business.
The teaser campaign for the brand’s Major Skin Hydra-Luxe Luminous Skin Perfecting Foundation ($58, available directly on its website and at Sephora) is already gathering momentum on TikTok, with over three million views. Fuelling the buzz are videos featuring Ta and beauty influencer Jools Lebron playing into the “very demure, very mindful, very cutesy” trend sweeping the internet. “We’re not like those other girls, we’re very cutesy when we match our foundation, we’re very mindful of the colour match,” says Lebron in one of the videos. I sat down with Ta, Villatoro and Barrett to discuss the launch and their wider strategy.
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Vogue: Patrick, you’ve brought in and expanded your C-suite team over the last 18 months — what inspired the change?
Ta: The brand had grown in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I launched it with my partners Avo and Rima but my co-founders and I required a senior team, especially Kimberly as my CEO, to come in and help lead and build on the brand that consumers see today. I’m always travelling, seeing clients, building my personal brand and researching product development. We needed someone — a team — to manage the day-to-day, steer strategy and amplify what we're doing.
Vogue: Has the transition been smooth?
Ta: We hired the team because we respect their opinions and they’re as passionate about the brand as we are. I didn’t want them to come in and just say ‘yes’, otherwise we’d be stagnant. So, I’ve learnt to step back and let them do what they are good at. When we have a difference of opinion we will all bring our pros and cons lists before deciding what’s best for the brand. I focus on artistry and product development, and Kimberly and Jacqui [alongside my co-founders] lead our strategy and innovation.
Vogue: Kimberly, you’ve also transitioned from a conglomerate-based role — why was Patrick Ta Beauty your next move?
Villatoro: What drew me to the company was its potential. I worked for Estée Lauder Companies, running two of its brands in North America. I remember attending ‘Sephoria’ [Sephora’s annual beauty festival] in 2019 as part of the ELC team scoping out new brands. I came across Patrick and his co-founders, who were activating the brand for the first time. There were lines wrapped around the building ready to meet him. I remember thinking to myself, something is happening here, it’s truly magnetic.
Vogue: With that in mind, what did you feel you could bring to Patrick Ta Beauty?
Villatoro: I saw the opportunity to tell a deeper story about the brand and draw on Patrick’s artistry to propel the products and its individual marketing story. The brand is still being introduced to consumers because we’re a young company and now is the time to cement the two as we evolve.
Vogue: How do you plan to scale the brand?
Villatoro: There are many categories that we are strategically looking to move into. One is our liquid foundation because we know what a loyalty driver and anchor colour cosmetics are to a brand’s longevity in this industry. As for true longevity, it’s why we’re taking the steps today to build awareness and emotional connection with our customers through masterclasses, one-on-one artistry sessions with creators and their communities and detailed product tutorials led by Patrick. Then, to ensure our product line-up supports the growth and consumer needs for performance and quality.
Vogue: Speaking of the foundation launch, was that risky given the current consumer shift towards tints and tinted moisturisers?
Villatoro: When Patrick and his co-founders launched the brand with body products in the colour category, that was a bold and disruptive move. So, I think we’ve always taken a path that is a little less conventional.
Ta: Also, the foundation launch has been in the pipeline for years but it needed to be perfect, I needed to be confident in it and the formula had to stand the test of time. Consumers may purchase 10 blushes but they don’t purchase 10 foundations. Equally, I’ve always said to Kimberly that I don’t want to operate like a corporate company. We want to run this brand with heart, and have a soul behind the products we launch and when. We don’t want our products to just be another SKU, or we won’t launch them at all.
Vogue: Jacqueline, why invest in out-of-home marketing?
Barrett: It’s less about shifting into new tactics and more about bringing together a full 360-marketing ecosystem. We have an incredible social media and online community but there are a large number of people that aren’t active within the social media ecosystem. They don’t live and die by beauty on TikTok.
And so for something as important as a brand campaign that tells a very heartfelt, personal story and introduces a brand’s promise and values, we wanted to add additional tactics so more people could feel included. We want new audiences to see us on Sunset Boulevard, on the side of a bus as part of someone’s commute, top-ranking on Google and across social media.
Vogue: What has been the response to the campaign?
Ta: I definitely feel it when I’m in the gym and guys go, ‘Hey, you’re the guy on Sunset,’ versus ‘Hey, you’re the makeup artist,’ so I guess it’s working in my favour. But those interactions assure me that new audiences are seeing the brand and resonating with the campaign. If someone who isn’t tapped into the beauty community and isn’t getting it through content on TikTok makes the connection in their mind, something is working.
Villatoro: Also, I can only share this anecdotally, but we’ve had a billboard in Times Square over the last couple of weeks and Sephora’s Times Square location has become our number one door in the entire country since.
Vogue: Finally, how do you envision the beauty industry’s future and Patrick Ta Beauty’s position within it?
Villatoro: We’re seeing an intentional shift where consumers gravitate towards brands that have purpose and deliver an experience for them. Mass is suffering and prestige is growing because these brands can offer experience and quality. It uniquely positions us because we’ve always had an accessible luxury experience: we’re vanity worthy. In the next few years, you’ll see us expand to spaces where we see consumer growth, expanding into more international territories.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
