Brand of the Year
Mass: Naturium
Ben Bennett, founder of The Center, prefers the word accelerator to incubator and no wonder. Naturium, one of the company’s star brands, has been a sales rocket ship, a runaway success since its launch in 2019. That performance paid off this year when E.l.f. Beauty acquired the skin care standout for $355 million. The brainchild of Bennett and lifestyle influencer/journalist Susan Yara, Naturium’s strong value proposition combining active ingredients like niacinamide, vitamin C and hyaluronic acid with botanicals, with an average price of $18, has played well at Target, Amazon and Space NK in the U.K. “We’ve built an incredible brand with numerous superstar formulas, a dedicated community and a world-class team in less than four years,” said Yara at the time of the acquisition. “Our strategies couldn’t be more aligned,” agreed E.l.f. chief executive officer Tarang Amin. “We made the best of beauty accessible to every eye, lip, face and skin concern. They make the best of skin care accessible.”
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Prestige: Sol de Janeiro
When Heela Yang was crafting the mission, personality and identity of Sol de Janeiro, she imagined her ideal customer as someone who doesn’t just walk, but saunters. Eight years later, the brand is definitely strutting its stuff. Its hero Bum Bum Cream is a top performer in the skin care category (a huge achievement for a body product), while its Perfume Mist is a leader in the scent category. The former has given the entire category of body care a jolt, while the latter has ushered in mists as a top-selling format in prestige. The brand, which was acquired by L’Occitane in 2021, is expected to end the year with $650 million in global retail sales, of which $475 million should come from the U.S. And while Yang is proof positive that a hero product can build a significant brand, Sol de Janeiro has no intention of stopping anytime soon. “We’re blessed with this fun, playful lifestyle brand that can extend across many categories,” Yang said at the WWD Beauty CEO Summit. “We can really have fun. The sky’s the limit.”
Wellness: Love, Wellness
With probiotics, suppositories, digestive enzymes, topicals and a slew of other supplements, Love Wellness has made a name for itself with its approach to the gut-brain-vagina connection. Since its inception in 2016, the doctor-developed products have garnered rave reviews like “life changing.” Since 2021, Love Wellness has reached more than $100 million at retail, which includes Ulta Beauty, Target and most recently 1,600 Walmart doors, which the brand called an $8 million opportunity within the first year. To harness growth, the brand brought on Maria Dempsey, formerly of Nest New York, as chief executive office, with founder Lo Bosworth shifting to chairwoman of the board, where she manages marketing, product development and retail strategy. With more than 32 million views on the hashtag #LoveWellness on TikTok alone, it’s also a social media standout. Bosworth and brand loyalists have posted their own experiences and routines with the products, driving key conversations and taking the taboo out of once hush-hush topics surrounding women’s health.
Retailer of the Year/Company: Amazon
When it comes to prestige beauty, Amazon has long been the elephant in the room, shunned by many prestige brands who feared that the online retailer wasn’t the right environment in terms of image and education for their products. Slowly, though, and with skill, Amazon has turned the tide, becoming a key player with 12 percent market share in prestige and more than 100 million unique beauty shoppers a month. Under the leadership of Melis del Rey, this year Amazon further solidified its role in beauty, focusing on three key areas to attract luxury cosmetics shoppers: reinventing immersive technologies, personalization and elevating the experience. The strategy worked. Lancôme, one of the traditional “big three” stalwarts of department store retailing, launched on the platform this year, joining brands like Laneige, Clarins, ColorWow and Shiseido that were already there. Brad Pitt’s Le Domaine was also a newcomer. The goal, said Del Rey earlier this year, is to inspire consumers with new experiences. “Whether it’s everyday beauty or consumer beauty or luxury,” she said, “we are committed to that mission.”
Retailer of the Year/Person: Creighton Kiper, Vice President, Merchandising, Beauty, Walmart
Creighton Kiper was named vice president of beauty merchandising at Walmart in February 2022 and wasted no time in making his impact felt. He not only continued the modernization strategy started under his predecessor, he accelerated it. “We’re doing exceptionally well,” he reported earlier in the year. “We’re probably a bit ahead of schedule.” Despite a mass market beauty business in decline, Walmart’s business has been bolstered by the updates to its brand mix, including heritage and luxury brands. Hair care has been a bright spot, with Madison Reed entering 1,500 doors. In skin care, brands like Bubble and Hero continue to resonate, while newer launches like Current State are soaring. Walmart even sponsored the recently relaunched BeautyCon, all this on top of a steady stream of indie brand launches and even its own incubated brands. Kiper is a Walmart veteran who’s moved from children’s apparel to pet food to health and wellness. But he’s proven himself an able student of beauty. “Beauty changes in trend, it’s like fashion,” he told Beauty Inc. “We’ve got some core tenets that we’ll stick to and then we reserve the right to get smarter.”
Influencer of the Year: Monet McMichael
Monet McMichael was nine years old, sitting in her childhood bedroom, when she first declared to YouTube her intent to become a “beauty guru.” She had always loved playing with makeup — to which her mother Alexandra’s often-ransacked makeup bag can attest — and in leveraging her passion into a creative outlet, has since won over a global following of more than 5 million people with her laid-back, unfiltered charm and artful social media content. From obtaining her nursing degree from Rutgers University in 2022 to making her runway debut at L’Oréal Paris’ “Walk Your Worth” fashion show this past fall, McMichael has brought her audience along through it all — including the moments of self-doubt that inevitably come with being perceived at scale. In an era where the word “authenticity” is often characterized as a goal, McMichael embodies authenticity through action, speaking candidly about her mental health and self-love journeys while opening the door for her viewers to do the same. “The magic in creating content is the connection it creates,” said McMichael, who routinely engages with her community in the comment sections of her posts across TikTok, YouTube and Twitter. This approach has made her a powerhouse creator: According to CreatorIQ, McMichael has fueled more than $10.5 million in earned media value for beauty brands in 2023 — up from $2.5 million in 2022.
Creative Force: Patrick Ta
Makeup artist Patrick Ta is known for his meticulous approach to his craft. He often spends up to two hours readying celeb clients like Karol G., Salma Hayek, Camila Cabello and Gigi Hadid for the red carpet. The self-taught Ta has taken the same tack to building his namesake brand, painstakingly creating products that meet his meticulous approach and enable consumers to easily replicate his signature “blush and glow” style, such as Major Headlines Double Take Crème and Powder Blush Duo. Five years in, having survived the pandemic as a baby brand, Ta is really hitting his stride. The entrepreneur is as comfortable in front of the camera as behind, and has used his social media prowess to fuel the business. This year, he created a viral moment with TikTok star Alix Earle, when he flew to her Miami college apartment to bond over beauty. The resulting collab flew off shelves, as has everything else: In 2023, under CEO Kimberly Villatoro, sales have almost tripled, and at Sephora, Patrick Ta has jumped 11 ranks and will enter the year as a top-25 makeup brand. Not bad for a line that still doesn’t play in key categories like foundation (watch this space) and is often merchandised just in Sephora’s Next Big Thing area. The next big thing, it seems, is here.