Start a Makeup Brand

If you have a passion for makeup and would love to start your own makeup brand then this section will show you exactly how can source your makeup products, market your brand, and scale your brand to a very profitable business.

The first thing you will want to do is figure out what type of products you want to sell and wo your target customer will be. Do you want to offer a variety of organic products? Do you want to start a lip gloss brand? Do you want to focus on mascara or foundation? Do you want to make a brand focused on creating compostable packaging or one that gives back to a charity that you believe in? Whatever it is think about what your product will be, what your message is and who your target audience is. What age is your audience? What lifestyle do they live? Maybe you can cater to an ethnicity, skin color, or group of people that are underrepresented by the larger brands. Make sure that you have a brand story, mission, or ingredients that will set your brand apart from all the brands that are out there already and that you can make an effective marketing strategy around it.

The next step will be to determine whether you want to make your makeup yourself, manufacture your make up, use a white label brand that allows you to add your packaging or curate other makeup brands to resell on your site. You can always change this process later as you grow so I recommend starting with a white label option, picking brands to wholesale, or making the products yourself at first so that it does not cost you a fortune up front. We will touch on each of these options in this section but keep in mind creating a proprietary formula with a chemist and manufacturing it will cost a lot more than these options.

If you want to provide certain products like lip balms, face oils or bath products then you can start making them yourself from home. You can simply search on YouTube how to make these products and get started playing around with the process until you create something that your target customers will love. This will give you the most control over the ingredients you are using, especially if you wish to start an organic brand and you can try different formulas till it works for you. Keep in mind that if you go this route, you will also want to check on the FDAs guidelines or the guidelines for ingredients and preparation in your area.

If you choose to work with a white label company, then you will want to start ordering samples from different suppliers and seeing which ones will work best for you. You can of course contact suppliers off of DH Gate or Alibaba, but I Recommend starting with more reputable make up suppliers like Genie Supply which will ensure you get high quality products that meet ingredient requirements in your area. You can even call Genie Supply during their business hours and talk to a rep that will walk you through some of the options that would be great for your brand. You can then order samples to make sure that they work for you and work with them to label the product with your packaging. You can also check out Manta.com to look up a list of beauty product manufacturers around the U.S. as well with many offering white label products. Find all the products that you want to use for your brand during this process and you will be ready to start branding and marketing your business.

If you want to curate some other brands that you can resell on your site, then you can go to sites like Faire.com or jniwholesale.com to find products to add to your site. Using a wholesale site like these will allow you to buy your make up in bulk to get discounted prices that you can up charge. The main thing you want to keep in mind when going this route is to start small and to keep in mind the shelf life of each product so that you do not lose money from waste.

If you really want to manufacture a patented blend of cosmetics then you will have to put up a lot of money to hire a chemist. I recommend like we said before to start with one of the other options and work your way up to this but if you have the money and want to start here then you can use a chemist like that is on the society of cosmetic chemists’ website at scconline.org or you can find some cosmetic chemists for cheaper on upwork.com. Make sure to get references for these chemists and to look at any reviews that they have online. Also just like with any of these options, make sure that you are checking that they meet regulations for your area and that they are certified organic for your country if you are starting an organic brand as well as checking common allergens to make sure they are not using any that may limit your customer base.

Once you have figured out the products you will use for your brand it is time to build the branding for your company itself. Your brand should speak to the target audience that you have already determined from our first step. You should create a TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Website that you will use to funnel your customers to from these platforms. You will also want to create a name and logo for your brand by creating them yourself, using fiver.com or typing in give me some make up brand names for ____ niche into Chat GPT. Once you have a name you like you can then even ask Chat GPT to give you a prompt to use with an AI art generator to make a logo for that brand. You can then take that prompt and paste it to an AI art generator like Mid Journey to get a logo. You will then add that logo to your social media profiles you created and to brand your site.

Next you will want to create a design for the packaging of your products. You can do this on Photoshop or photopea.com (a free alternative) or you can go on fiverr.com or upwork.com to have a professional make your packaging for you. Some manufacturers also provide this service, but they will typically use a one size fits all approach that is similar to other brands and they may charge more for this service than you can pay on sites like fiverr.com. No matter how you get this done, make sure that your branding is unique and that it speaks to your target customer as always. A lot of times the packaging is more important than the product itself because it is the first impression your customers will get before even using your product. Make sure that it speaks to your mission or story and that it looks very premium in quality.

When you are creating your site, you can check out other big make up brands similar to yours to see how they layout their site. You can use shopify.com to build your site and it has some helpful plugins specifically for makeup brands. However, they will take a large cut of your profits, so I recommend building your site on a normal website builder like Wix instead. You can learn all about building a site with Wix in our how to build a professional site section. Your site should have a picture of a model that is in your target audience wearing your makeup and holding your top product. You should break down your products by category and make sure that you are thorough yet concise with your product description. Be sure to show a picture of each product on skin and in the packaging. You can also use a plugin called Virtual Cosmetics Try On if you are using Shopify, that will allow your customers to try your products virtually before buying them! You should make use of recommended products in order to upsell customers by adding them to check out pages manually or by using a plugin like Lime Spot Personalizer if you are using Shopify. Once you get some customers you will also want to make use of testimonials and picture reviews from other customers as well. You can even add make up tutorials to other sections of your site to keep your customers on page and add a blog that talks about news related to your niche. You can also check out our section on SEO marketing to learn how to rank for long tail keywords that your customers may be searching for on Google.

Now that you have everything you need to start selling makeup online, you will want to place a small order from your supplier to start or take preorders on your products with the marketing tactics we will talk about in just a minute. If you can take preorders instead of just ordering products ahead of sale, then you can use your presale money to fund your first order and take a profit right away. Once you do start holding products, make sure that you are storing them in areas that are not hot and out of any sunlight, so they do not melt. This seems obvious but make sure to keep this in mind so that you do not waste 100s or even 1,000s of dollars in inventory.

So now you are all ready to start selling your makeup! You should focus on first getting to work making 3 short videos every day that you will start posting to the platforms that you made earlier. Even before finishing the production process we went over, you can start doing this to grow a community around your brand even before accepting orders. You can make videos about the process of starting your makeup business, the building of your brand, showing off samples of your makeup and anything else that relates to your target customers. The best way to structure these videos effectively is to use a hook that outlines a problem that your target customer has and lead them through the video to you showing how your brand will solve that problem for them. You may be making a company that focuses on darker skin colors for example and a video may start by talking about how it is hard to find makeup for people of color. You can then transition to talking about how your company focuses on that exact topic and can help solve the problem for them. You can learn all about how to create these ads in our how to make effective video ads section as well. The main thing you want to make sure of is that you are posting 3 videos per day and that you are consistently posting to each of the platforms we went over. You can even create multiple accounts on each platform (2 TikToks (per phone with service), 2 Instagrams (per phone with service), YouTube, and a Facebook page) so that you can post to each account with all of them linking your site in their bio. Try to use different short links or pages to keep the sites from detecting multiple on the platforms. This will get you in front of exponentially more people and allow you to grow astronomically! You can also use this tactic to market for presale spots before you launch like we mentioned and offer a free gift for being one of your first customers.

Another great way to market makeup is by paying influencers to do product reviews on their social media profiles. Search makeup on Instagram and YouTube and write a long list of influencers that you can reach out to to market your product. You can even go on fiverr.com and search influencers to find people that will make you a list of influencers on YouTube and Instagram for your niche. Once you have a list together, start emailing and DMing them about marketing your product. I personally like to create a template that I can send to all of them that starts with hey I am a big fan of your page and have just started a makeup brand that focuses on _____ then quickly ask what they charge to do a product review. Of course, big profiles will charge a lot more and tend to actually have worse results for your money than hiring a lot of smaller influencers that you can negotiate more with on price. Keep this in mind when finding influencers to work with and don’t be afraid to start with smaller profiles.

One last tip for marketing your makeup brand is to get creative with getting in front of your target audience. If you are marketing to athletes for sweat proof makeup for example, go to women’s sports events, the gym, tennis matches and hand out small samples with your business card. Join groups on Facebook and reddit that relate to your target audience and add value to people’s posts. Once you have made a name for yourself in that niche you can start asking for business more often and you will be amazed at how fast your brand can grow just by these people telling their friends about your company.

If you stay consistent with these forms of marketing and continue innovating with your products, you will be amazed how quickly you can see success with your brand. If your marketing is not working, try to appeal to a more niche audience and keep going until you find a customer base that works for you. Be sure to start in a way that keeps your overhead and product storage low and grow at a pace that works for you. If you make use of the tactics we have laid out, especially with filling preorders, then you can start with very little money and grow at your own pace so that you never have to close shop. Stay persistent and focus on growing a community of like-minded people and your brand will do just fine.