We call this the age of specialization.
After years of celebrity and influencer-driven brands, demand for expert-led content is paving the way for makeup artists, hairstylists, estheticians, dermatologists, plastic surgeons and more to enter, or in some cases re-enter, the brand game.
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While a crowded playing field full of incumbent authorities and a host of cool, famous or influencer-backed opponents await them, it is their background in their field that gives them the edge.
“Expert-led brands are experiencing a renewed moment,” said Lucie Greene, founder of Light Years Consulting. “This is partly driven by TikTok and Instagram culture, where we’re seeing more and more people we follow and like to give credit to who they use – it could be anyone from plastic surgery to beauty to hair.”
Many boast strong social media followings. Earlier this year, Dr. Plastic surgeon Dr. who launched the product line called Diamond’s Metacine. Jason Diamond has 367,000 followers on Instagram alone. Makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes, whose clients include Ashley Graham, Karlie Kloss and Hailey Bieber, has 884,000 followers on the platform and launched a makeup brand called KJH last month.
“We understand their expertise and form a personal connection with them,” Greene said. “There’s an element to these expert-led brands where you feel like they’re actually innovating to create something new, and it feels like it’s been outsourced in some way, compared to some brands that are incubated by influencers or celebrities.”
This is a strategy that works well. It is said that the sales of Jones Road, the second makeup brand of makeup artist Bobbi Brown, exceeded 120 million dollars this year, while the sales of Makeup by Mario, founded by makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic, exceeded 50 million dollars last year.
This success gives more professionals the confidence to become entrepreneurs, said Ilya Seglin, managing director of investment banking at Threadstone Advisors.
He attributes the resurgence of connoisseur-focused brands to consumer confusion. “The consumer story continues and they are overstimulated. How do you try to rank all these products in all these categories? You need efficiency, and the natural reaction would be to turn to someone who has the authority to actually talk about the product,” Seglin said.
“This is a huge advantage because it allows you to cut through the noise. The consumer interacts with living and working constituents. In the beginning, it allows you to capture that audience.
Consumers aren’t the only ones who rely on resumes when deciding which brands to buy, Seglin said. “Retailers are doing the same thing,” he said. “They know they’ll get the most success from someone with authority, no matter what category they’re speaking to.”
Tracy Kline, Bluemercury’s president of sales, spa and supply chain, agrees. “I don’t even think it matters; This is really important. The beauty industry is booming, the customer is now questioning it much more than before,” she said. “’Why is this brand important and why is it different from other brands? ‘What good will it do for me?’ The customer is trying to understand and verify this. Expertise is very important.”
This is especially true in skin care, where consumers are more knowledgeable than ever about ingredients and doctor-based brands are growing in popularity. Bluemercury’s newly renovated New Canaan, Conn. The location has a wall dedicated to derm-supported brands.
Kline added the caveat that this expertise may not be too specific in marketing and communications. “It needs to be digestible. We are not scientists. When educating the beautician to educate the client, you must express it in a way they understand. “This is something science-backed brands have learned,” he said.
In evaluating Bluemercury’s brand matrix, Kline noted that the retailer takes its time launching brands. “We pause and learn about these brands before we launch them. “If you launch a brand too quickly without understanding how it fits into the portfolio or how the customer will engage with them, it will backfire.”
In addition to Bluemercury testing each brand, the company has also assembled a team of industry professionals. Joining this in 2022 is the company’s first dermatologist consultant, Dr. Elyse Love is also included. “We form what we call our Beauty Council, and these are experts in their field who bring great knowledge and are with us to provide advice and education,” Kline said.
Diamond, a renowned plastic surgeon, founded his brand to offer a product to complement the in-office procedure InstaFacial. Playing with his medical history moved the needle the most in terms of building brand awareness. Diamond’s husband and Metacine co-founder Dr. “When you talk about the brand and the authority with which you’ve built it, that’s what resonates with people and that’s where we see the most engagement,” Jessica Combs said.
“He talks about different topics like how he developed products, how he became a doctor, etc. These things attract the consumer’s attention and we see that a lot of people are really interested in this type of content.”
“I’ve been living in the skin-related trenches for 20 years, seeing the ins and outs of everything skin works with,” Diamond added. “And we combine products with real procedures. We see people offering direct, immediate feedback all the time. “We are still actively in the trenches.”
It also gives its brand an established consumer base. “He’s so confident in what he does that the consumer makes the correct assumption that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to working with formulas and what’s going on in the body,” said Mark Ferdman, Metacine’s chief brand officer. “All of these ingredients mimic what’s happening in the body, and he’s very familiar with what’s going on biologically.”
Skincare brand Symphonic MD, which launched this week with a retinol and vitamin C hybrid serum as well as a gluconic acid cleanser, also relies on a strong network of medical experts for product development and marketing. This includes chief medical officer Dr. David Chernoff and his accompanying dermatologist advisory board are also included. The business is led by managing director and founder Cherry Robinson, who has worked at DCL Skincare, Maison Berger Paris and Schwarzkopf Professional.
“We are a community of medical doctors,” Robinson said. “There are other researchers and scientists among us, and we are a community of people from different disciplines. We each look at this through a different lens, and we each bring together our bandwidth, knowledge, and experience to begin this creative wish list.”
says Dr. D., the dermatologist behind Trnr Skincare, which launches direct-to-consumer this month with a cleanser, serum and moisturizer. Ryan Turner also said that his patients provide insight into the development of his brand. “I was hearing from patients that they couldn’t find exactly what they wanted on the market. I created my brand with the right percentages by looking at the natural world, which I am very interested in, and taking my medical education and botany science. It was a very thoughtful exercise,” Turner said.
CEO Carrie Pickett added: “You’re talking to a really highly educated consumer, even 12 and 14-year-olds. They know a lot about the ingredients, they’re knowledgeable about the product in general. “The by-product of launching these brands is the consumer driving the need for information.
Hughes’ own brand, KJH, also leveraged its community when designing products. “Two years ago, when my highlighting shadows were completed, we held a small panel and I put out a casting call on Instagram saying I wanted to test the product on people’s skin,” she said. “20 or 30 people came and I wanted to check out what it looked like. This will be something I will do with every product; “It’s a nice way to give the community a heads up.”
This month, KJH launched a direct-to-consumer highlighter kit for $75 that includes four shades and is accompanied by a highlighting serum and a brush. “I plan to launch products that allow people to become their own makeup artists,” Hughes said. “Beauty is so impressive and there is so much to learn. “I just want them to focus on the technique, and my community loves product development, loves behind-the-scenes, loves product development.”
Radiofrequency expert Ivan Pol, who introduced his brand The Beauty Sandwich with a stockkeeping unit (a facial oil serum called The Secret Sauce) earlier this year, said he draws on his own clients as facialists when creating his products. “No matter what, whether it was a celebrity client or a woman I met at the makeup counter 20 years ago, they all wanted to look radiant and dewy,” she said. “I wanted to create a product that would make you look that way even without makeup.”
Formulas are front and center for Ciele, the makeup-SPF hybrid brand co-founded by makeup artists Nikki DeRoest and Cerre Francis, which launched with Sephora earlier this year.
“People appreciate that we are an arts brand and have a lot of industry experience,” Francis said. “We have also worked with other brands; We have seen that the consumer now wants this originality. There are great celebrity-endorsed brands, but we’re moving in a direction where formulas really need to stand the test of time.
Despite DeRoest’s social presence (she has 259,000 followers on Instagram), it’s the facts about the products that convert the most. “Nikki and I want to put out these crazy, beautiful visuals, but the five-star ratings, the SPF ratings, the artist tests — those are the details that come back to our site and convert into sales,” Francis said. “This is direct, to-the-point product photography with facts.”
It was also learned how DeRoest interacted with the brand’s laboratory partners. “I had a formula that I knew was pore-clogging,” she said. “I told the chemist he had to dig deeper for something else, I couldn’t accept the formula that way. Its biggest advantage is to challenge chemists.”
“As a brand owner and also as a consumer, I exclude myself from this and the brands I consume are the brands of other artists,” DeRoest added. “There is something I believe they are doing. I want to buy hair products from Rōz because I know [founder] Mara Roszak has been working in the industry for a long time.”
Roszak’s hair care brand, Rōz, received funding earlier this year, and that brand is estimated to reach $5 million in retail sales this year, according to industry sources. Prices for their products, which include care, styling and cleansing products, range from $39 to $42 and are sold at Credo Beauty and Moda Operandi.
“If I know anything, it’s hair. “I live and breathe this every day,” he said. “My product development includes everything from what I want to create, how I want it to respond, and what it should do. These products need to exist because of that experience.”
Roszak began developing her products three years ago while trying to find safe, performance-focused products for pregnant consumers. From the time he spent in the living room, he knew he wasn’t alone. “My customers in my chair; women and men looking for products that work and strive to do their own hair; I talk to them and understand what they are looking for. “I can clearly see a lot of opportunities.”
Although Roszak closed the financing round earlier this year, which included celebrity clients like Daisy Ridley and Mila Kunis, Seglin suggested that the key to building and scaling an expert-focused business starts with building a team.
“Every company goes through three stages. “First you are a product, then you are a brand, then you are a business,” he said. “As you grow and whether you’re doing a private equity deal or ultimately selling to a strategic company, you need to make sure that there’s a marketing team working around a founder, a product development team working around a founder. “You have to make sure that the executive is not dependent on the founder.”
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