Lily Twelve Tree (0:27)

And welcome back to the Bareface Podcast, a beauty business podcast hosted by yours truly. My name is Lily twelve Tree. I'm a beauty analyst and data science student. And this is Barefaced, a market research company that also has this podcast where we talk about all things business of beauty. I hope you've all had a great week. I've had a huge week which has been exhausting, but super, super exciting. I'm currently in Sydney packing up my life and have shipped it back to Adelaide, my hometown. Cause I'm moving back to mainly go all in on Bareface, but also to finish off my degree in data science, which is really exciting and it's been kind of surreal. I've been in Sydney for nearly five years and I love it here. But I now know that I'm moving so I can work on this, which is I'm just truly so, so excited about. So that's been really cool. It's also been really cool because it's been such a huge week for Bareface. Bareface was featured in the New York Times, which was crazy. I was interviewed by one, one of my favorite journalists, Marissa Meltzer, who wrote the book Glossy, which was about the rise and fall of glossier the brand. It's a terrific book, I highly recommend it. I also saw Marissa speak earlier this year at the Sydney Opera House and she's amazing. So that was really, really cool. I've also made a lot of moves this week in terms of partnerships and working with brands, which is something I want to talk about in more detail at the end of today's episode. But then off the back of that, I've also been chatting to and have now found a graph designer that I'm going to onboard part time to help Bareface, which is so, so, so exciting. It's just been such a crazy week which I think has made this whole move and leaving my favorite city of Sydney a lot less sad and bitter and more kind of exciting and a new stage. But today's episode is part two of the UK beauty market. So if you missed last week's episode, we went deep into understanding why the British beauty market is so crowded. Why are there so many retailers fighting over the luxury beauty in person retail space? Why are there so many online only retailers? Who are they owned by? Why did Sephora Rock up four years ago after they left in 2005 from memory, there's been so much like why boots trying to sell why super drugs so dominant when they're the only mass player. We went into all of that last week. And while last week's episode isn't preliminary knowledge that you need to know for today's episode to make sense, that's not the case. It does help provide a foundation of who the British consumer is, what are they interested in, and using those business moves to understand how those businesses have forecasted the interest. So today that episode was actually built off of my research for this episode, which is a bit of a different direction. We're going to try and understand why the British consumer, beauty consumer I should say, is so different. And as always, we're going to break this down into parts. So first we'll get a snapshot of the overall market health. Last week we went into individual, individual retailers, but instead this will just be an overlook of reports on category, unit sales, category growth, and then we'll also compare that to big retailers like Boots and the category breakdown of their newest products. So we can try and understand where internal buying teams have forecasted consumer trends. We'll then also look at the number of beauty brands that have launched in the UK over the last 20 years before we then go into part two, which will be trends will be able to go a little bit deeper and work backwards in understanding why is British makeup stylistically different, how is the culture different in the uk, how does that impact beauty? And where do both stereotypes and trends alike come from in terms of like full coverage, looks, veneers and teeth and everything else before finally, we'll look at part three, which will be brands. So from young homegrown brands dominating on TikTok Shop to legacy brands that have become international sensations, what is the difference between these brands? What are the similarities? What do they do well, what are they doing differently? Before we dive into this episode, just like any episode really, I'm not a beacon of truth, although I spend a lot of time researching when something like today is a little bit less quantifiable than last week's topic, there's a still a lot of that, there's a lot of stats, a lot of reports were read. But today's topic is more centered around British culture and there is no amount of reading or research or video watching that could ever make me British or understand things like the impact of the recent elected governments or the deep rooted class divide that is incredibly alive and well in that country. So for that reason I knew that this episode had to be built around people that understand the market better than I do. So I reached out to two lovely Internet friends and beauty influencers in the uk. The lovely Katush Goal and C they were both incredibly helpful in building out today's episode, so I want to thank them right off the bat. You can check them both out on TikTok. Katoosh's handle is katoosh spelled K A T O u C H E underscore and then C. Her handle is looks spelled C E dot L O U X. They're both on TikTok. They're both incredibly knowledgeable and have made some great content on this topic, so be sure to check them out. And as always, if you have any thoughts or questions on today's episode, be sure to head to Substack and leave them on the post for today's episode, which also has, as I started doing from last week, all the graphs and key figures of today's story mapped out. So hopefully you can refer back to it if there's pockets of insights that you find particularly helpful. But anyway, let's get stuck into it. Part 1 Market Health well, less of market health because we got a pretty good snapshot of that through the retail landscape last week. But if we look at the health of the beauty industry as a whole in the UK over the last five years and also on a category level, we can start to understand how this customer is different, what they're interested in and where lies the growth opportunities, rather than going straight to TikTok trends and using that as a reflection of the whole market. So the British Beauty Council reported in August that the British beauty industry grew by 11% in 2023. Their value of Beauty Report, which was released as a reflection of FY24, showed that Oxford economists found that sales reached 27.2 billion pounds. This was just 0.8 billion behind the pre Covid average of 28 billion. This growth puts the personal care category ahead of publishing, chemical manufacturing and the creative arts and entertainment industries. And although the growth is expected to slow this financial year because it's alongside price increases, Oxford economists still predict a growth of 3% in FY 2025, which is far higher than the 1% average for the entire British economy. This is the first huge stat that shows us how much British girls and boys love their beauty. It really says a lot about the buying power of the beauty consumers in the UK to bounce back from COVID And we can't get an accurate picture of beauty in the UK by only zooming out as far as Covid. So the last five years we have to zoom out at least another 20 years. Companies House, which is the British government agency that maintains the registration of companies in the UK Companies House published this graph that I've uploaded to Substack and honestly, have a look. It's crazy, but the graph shows the number of companies registered in the UK that contain the word beauty in their name over the last like 40 years. And every year until 2014, beauty appeared in the name of less than 500 companies. But since 2014, there have been more than 500 companies a year incorporated with the word beauty in their name. With the total in 2020, I couldn't find a 2025 stat, but the total of 2020 coming to 14,242 brands with beauty in the name. As a side note, Companies House lets you see the filings of every business. I'm talking stocks, debitas, cash on hand, and it's insane. It's publicly available information and obviously there are government bodies, so it's completely legit. But something about it feels so strange and sketchy, like it feels wrong to be able to search up a company in the UK and see all of that, all of all of this information ever since they started existing as a company. But anyway, we now need to get a snapshot of what the British consumer is most interested in. And I thought to look at the biggest beauty retailer in the country, which we very well established last week, is Boots, and see what categories and subcategories they were predicting their internal buying team had forecast to have the most growth. Currently on Boots website, there are 1975 products listed as new under beauty and skincare. Almost 62% of that is makeup, 26% is skin care, 8% is hair care, 3% is accessories and 1% is fragrance, 62% is makeup. That partly blew my mind, because makeup has not been close to the most dominant category of any conversation in the beauty industry for years. It's in seemingly every article and report for the last five years, comfortably, it's all been about the decline of color cosmetics and the rise in interest in skin care. And now that skin care is kind of had its moment, it's seemingly understood to have peaked. And now various industry professionals are placing bets on whether hair care or body care or wellness or some other category will be the next one to really take off the way that we saw skincare do so in the pandemic. But no one has been talking about color cosmetics. So for 62% of boots, newness to be makeup is wild. And it doesn't stop there, it just keeps getting stronger. Because when we compare the category growth at Boots in the UK to the Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery association, their industry figures from 2022 to 2023, therefore the most relevant year on year growth because we haven't got the report for 2023-2024 yet when we look at unit sales of cosmetics. So the number of products per category that were sold in 2023 versus 2022. Color cosmetics had the largest growth of any category at 4.1%. That is more than double the next highest category, which was Fragrance, that had 2% growth. Skincare had 1% growth and hair care was back 1.8%. And so was toiletries, back at 1.9%. All of this is helping paint a picture of how much British consumers love their makeup. Color cosmetics in particular is so much stronger here than any other market. But to understand why makeup unit sales are so strong, or why boots, for example, have over 60% of their newness coming from color cosmetics, we need to now understand the trends in British makeup. We need to understand, okay, that's the strongest category, but what are you buying? What are different pockets of the country interested in and why? Part 2 Stylistic Trends There is a makeup look that to me at least is so distinctly British. It's like the perfect full beat. It's a bright under eye defined brow, fluffy lashes and an ombre glossy lip. I've collected a few examples examples and pop them up on the post for today's episode. If for somehow you don't know what I'm describing, but I feel like you will all get it. Trends in British makeup are stylistically very different to those in America and Australia, as there's a lot more focus on full coverage and color and there's a lot more glamour. It's obvious that girls in the UK have a love for the artistry of the makeup. And that's not to say that in the US that isn't the case because you've got huge makeup artists, slash creators like makeup by Mario or makeup by Ariel that offer that artistry and education piece. But it's more about the appearance of effortlessness or product placement to minimize the appearance of makeup. And in the UK there's a lot more of layering products and there's less of a desirability to hide the fact that you've put a lot of effort in. And in a world where recent political events and fashion trends alike have shown us that conservatism is very much quote unquote in style, British makeup can almost feel radical in a way for women to walk around and visibly demonstrate the time that they've put into a look and just say no. I want you to see me. I want you to see my look. I think it's fucking dope, for lack of a better word. And I think what makes this particularly interesting is that when you think about the style that had us all internationally in a chokehold five to seven years ago, it was very much the look that British girls are now known for. Why has it stayed trendy in the UK Is it was the same makeup artist that I just listed, like makeup by Mario with Kim Kardashian and makeup by Ariel with Kylie Jenner back in the mid 2010s, the peak YouTube kind of 2017 era that really popularized this look. They certainly didn't invent it, but they sure did popularize it. Kim Kardashian had her KKW beauty contour sticks, Kylie Jenner with her matte liquid lip kits, and the in makeup style was all about carving out the crease, carving out the brow bone, baking the under eye with with powder, false lashes, ABH highlight palettes, Morphe 39 color eyeshadow palettes. And like I, I could go on. I feel like we all live this together. When the pandemic came and the zeitgeist seemed to shift its attention completely off of makeup and towards skincare, it's understood to be because we were all at home, so we weren't getting ready to leave the house, so we shifted our focus. But this just didn't happen to the same extent in the uk. Of course, I'm generalizing here. I feel like you all know what I mean. And we can't talk about the glam kind of baddie look in the UK without diving into the influence of black culture on beauty trends in this country. While it sits slightly separately because obviously it's not a trend and it doesn't solely exist in the UK either, it has had a huge impact on the trends in this region. There have been countless videos and articles made about this topic, and it's been appropriately named UK Black Girl Makeup. To highlight the significance of the influence that black girls have on British beauty culture. The TikTok hashtag UK makeup has 23,000 posts. Meanwhile, the hashtag UK black girl makeup has nearly 29,000 posts. When I spoke to Katush about this topic, she pointed out, and I quote, that the infamous UK Black Girl makeup is the next evolutionary stage in the highlighting and contour trends that came to the forefront in the 2010s for black women. Utilizing different products through different tones and shades is the perfect way to maximize a makeup look. Unlike our white counterparts. It's very difficult to walk into a shop or go to the makeup counter and find one solo product that can meet all of our makeup needs. This is because typically these products are not formulated with our features and characteristics in mind. This goes beyond finding the right shade of concealer. Tones and shading are very important to highlighting dark but also low contrast features, which as a white woman is something I had never considered. But when you think about the sculpting look of UK Black girl makeup, it makes a lot of sense. Katush went on and said that usually to achieve the UK Black girl makeup look, a full beat is simply required. For those that have hyperpigmentation or low contrast features, bolder makeup and full coverage is required to achieve the look. Therefore, makeup trends that rely on less coverage and a more subtle outcome of no use for black women and their stylistic makeup choices. I had never considered this in the context of low contrast features, because when we think about trends that have been in the forefront in makeup in particular for years at this point, or really since the pandemic, like the Clean Girl, which promotes an idolized image of minimalist beauty and effortless perfection, that leaves very little room for black women to participate in the same way. I hadn't thought about it in that context, but I had thought about it in the way that these trends don't really allow anyone to participate other than the beauty elite who barely need makeup for cosmetic enhancement. And I think one way that we've really seen this play out is how, to me at least, social media over the years has felt like it's just on TikTok particularly, become even more and more about aesthetics. Not aesthetics in an Instagram way of beautiful imagery that was really popular five to ten years ago, but now it's like the appearance of effortlessness. It's the appearance of get ready with me video and just flicking on the camera while I get ready. Taking away the production value has almost pushed more beautiful people onto those apps. And so the people that we're presented a lot of the times are just not regular looking. I'm not sure if that's unfair to say, because I don't want to undermine the work of beauty influencers either, because there are so many that I follow that I think are truly, truly brilliant. And maybe there's also something to be said about the fact that it's their careers, so they invest more in looking beautiful, which I'll touch on in just a second. But when a trend like the Clean Go takes over social media and all the people that are posting about it are already beautiful. It can be a little bit of an eye roll editing Luly jumping in here because I realized I never defined what the Clean Girl is or the Clean Girl aesthetic. So according to Dictionary.com, it's a look that is intended to appear elegantly casual, but also minimalist and effortless. Elements typically considered part of the aesthetic include using makeup products that give the appearance of using little or no makeup at all, styling hair in a bun updo or braided ponytail. Don't know about that. And also wearing casual clothes in muted color palettes. But anyway, as you were. It's like when you see the Vogue Beauty Secret videos and it's celebrities and supermodels in their bathroom showing you how they do their everyday makeup or even event glam if they're doing it theirself and it's like a dot of concealer or the tiniest bit of blush, and that's their whole look because they didn't really need anything to begin with. It's still entertaining content, and I imagine it very much moves product. But I truly think that there's a large genre of people that see past this now. Like, there's a subset of the total beauty audience online that understands that's simply not replicable for the average person. Therefore, we're seeking out experts, and we're more interested in people like the lipstick lesbians that take you through the manufacturing process of makeup, or dermatologists and skin doctors and estheticians that can actually teach you about the chemical makeup of skincare, because that seems more trustworthy. I think something else that layers on top of this, which really rarely gets addressed, is how much money is woven into selling those same ideals. Particularly when we consider the class structure in the UK and the lack of class mobility in a country that's had generations and generations of inherited hierarchy. Jimmy the Giant, by the way, is the name of a YouTuber with a great video titled the Great Great British Class System Explained, where he outlines just why there is such little class mobility. But C made a great point when I spoke to her about this, and she said a key look of the upper class or wealthy is looking maintained, and this costs. A part of their look is also understated, reserved and conservative. And I think it's a direct reflection of their financial and economic stability and freedom. I thought this was a great capture of some of the differences in beauty styling across the uk Someone really affluent who can pay for regular skin treatments, allowing them to replicate the routines of celebrities. That we see in those Vogue beauty secret videos versus someone who doesn't have that same access and needs more coverage to conceal. Or another version of that is someone really affluent can pay for regular teeth whitening or likely had braces when they were younger versus someone with less disposable income is more likely to go the veneers route. Right. It's a once and done procedure that you go in with whatever teeth you come out with, you know, fake ones. And whether or not you look good is in the eyes of the beholder. But the difference in the cost of those two procedures is huge and is really rarely addressed. I feel like you could stretch this as far to link tanning culture in with in the uk, where the tanned ideal is alive and well across the country, the entire population is routinely criticized for their pale complexion. So it's no surprise that nationwide Brits want to sport a tan. Yet those with money are more likely to be on regular holidays and sport a real tan versus wearing a fake tan. That's not exactly the same because real tanning is obviously awful for you. So there are countless rich people that I can think of that fake tan. But maybe it's a different of even having the time to spare each week to do a full removal, a full scrub before applying versus someone that doesn't. Maybe, maybe tanning is a stretch. But I think you get my point. And I think what's interesting about all of this, which links back to something that Katush mentioned about class pride. She said that in the uk, class pride is more important than class mobility because class in the UK is a lot more fixed. If you're from Essex, you will do your makeup in a way that reflects your social context. And I had never thought about it in this way because truly I have spent hours racking my brain around why British beauty seems to have pockets of such visual difference. And I think that's it. It's not that the beauty standards or desires or ideals are different across the country. It's just the way that people interact with them is less similar or uniform or homogeneous. And it's. There's no trend that unites each region. It's more of a country that is such a melting pot of culture with vibrant subcultures that almost exist in on their own entirely that there's definitely a point here to be made about the multiculturalism of the UK and how it impacts beauty in this regard. And you could, you can definitely say the same thing for the US too. But for some reason the trends in the UK feel more different than they do similar. And I think one way this is really obviously and well shown is in the distinct differences between popular homegrown brands that dominate in the UK versus homegrown brands that have grown more internationally. Part 3 Brands so the UK has produced some brilliant beauty brands over decades and decades that we simply can't talk about all of them today. But what I do want to do is speak to old versus new brands. I'm defining a new brand as any brand that was founded after 2016. And if that sounds ridiculous from the outset, it's based off of when you look at that graph by Companies House that I mentioned at the start, which shows the number of brands in the UK with beauty in their name. To remind you, under 500 brands had beauty in their name pre2014. Post 2014, more than 500 new beauty brands a year. And that's not even just beauty brands, that's simply brands with beauty in the name. And I chose 2016 for a reason that will make sense in a second. But there seems to be quite a distinct, distinct difference in British beauty brands that started pre and post this wave or this era due to the E Comm and social media boom that drastically lowered the cost of entry. But that's all been well established and I'm escaping the point. So if we look at old British beauty brands, we will quickly notice a theme. Rimmel London started in 1834. Max Factor, started in 1909. Body Shop, started in 1976. Jo Malone, 1990. Lush, 1995. Charlotte Tilbury, 2013. Pat McGrath Labs, 2015. These are all international brands. Jo Malone's biggest market is North America. Charlotte tilbury and Pat McGrath launched their brands off the back of international celebrity makeup artist success. Rimmel, Lush, the Body Shop, they have all been in the US for over 25 years. But if we compare that to popular young British beauty brands, we see a stark contrast. Doll Beauty, launched in 2016, made by Mitchell, 2020. P Louise, 2018. HNB Cosmetics, 2018. Almost all of the revenue of these businesses comes from the UK alone. One exception is Refy Beauty, which launched in 2020 and then expanded into America almost instantly in 2021 with a partnership with Sephora. They're going to sit as an asterisk because. Oh well. But a huge reason that we've seen so many new beauty brands launch in recent years is because they haven't had this need to go international. They haven't needed the same amount of capital to begin the company because they've been able to Stay specialized. In the uk previously, brand growth came from retail partnerships and distribution, right? More partners, more countries, more customers. That was the thought. But the downside of this was the dilution of local interest or localization. A huge hype word in the beauty industry for the last few years has been personalization. While this is often used to talk about brands like function of beauty, where you can fill out a questionnaire and they supposedly create a hair care routine specifically for your hair type, I think these young British brands are a better example of perhaps not personalization, but definitely localization where they've just, just hit the nail on the head for a niche that exists within one country. But thanks to social media and the amount of traffic that they can generate organically and brand awareness now can be done a lot more affordably. It's allowed them to speak directly to the makeup artist community. They do countless hours on live and create videos showing you how to achieve a certain look. They can do all the things we see, international artistry brands like Pat McGrath and makeup by Mario. They can do all of that, that but speak directly to the British consumer, which we know through social media trends. There's an interest in high impact pigment, full coverage, more color and these brands have been able to launch around that alone rather than needing to worry about mass international appeal, which would make those things a lot harder to sell if right out the gate you had to worry about that. But they speak directly to the trend of British makeup. And not only do these brands double down in the UK but they also double down on social media. But what they've done so, so brilliantly is like obviously you could have the greatest brand awareness in the world, but if you're not converting those customers, does it really matter? Are those just vanity metrics? But then rocks up is TikTok shop of the 10 highest revenue driving TikTok shop brands in the UK two weeks pre and two weeks post Black Friday, seven of them were beauty brands. So now in a non peak beauty buying season, it's currently the middle of Jan at the time of recording this. Still three of the top brands on TikTok shop in the UK are beauty brands with the clear front runner month after month being P Louise. They do nearly us $100,000 a day. And I pulled these stats yesterday. This is over the last 30 days from today, again a non peak period. That's a whopping $2.9 million purely from TikTok. All of these figures come from Kalodata by the way, which is a terrific resource, not sponsored but kalodata feel free to Something that will never fail to blow my mind is is that of the money on TikTok that P Louise generate themselves on the app, almost 75 of their revenue comes from holding lives on their account. I am personally not really a live watcher. There are a handful of creators that I see and I'll watch a bit because purely I just get FOMO but I never last more than three minutes. So for 75% of their own generated TikTok revenue is actually unimaginable. I should also add that TikTok shop is not available here in Australia so I personally have no experience in witnessing this, which might be a limited factor in my ability to report on this. But honestly I struggle to envision how all of this works and how brands are able to reach such insane revenue figures. But anyway, another interesting thing and insight about this is how TikTok algorithm plays into the pushing of lives because when an account you follow is live they will appear on your for you page multiple times and that is a huge reason that they're so favorable to brands. P Louise have had so much success with this that they broke the record I believe worldwide for the most revenue ever generated on a TikTok live which was 1.5 million pounds in 12 hours. They did $7.5 million in the Black Friday period and now have over 3 million followers. On this record breaking day though I do think it's worth mentioning that they were giving away product practically for free. They were selling items for a pound assuming they have a minimum order quantity or value. That would be like a loss leader, which isn't that crazy. But I do question the far fast fast fashion ification of it all because that is concerningly cheap. But anyway, so of the $2.9 million that they've generated that P Louise has generated in the last 30 days, according to Callow data, only 500k of that came from self operated accounts which meant that 2.3 million comes from affiliate commission. I stated that like half a million dollars isn't an insane amount of money to come from a single brand channel. Of course it is, but that's only 18% of their TikTok revenue. Everything affiliates P Louise are certainly not alone either. Retailers like Look Fantastic which we spoke about at length last week, they've joined TikTok shop and have generated $754,000 in the last 30 days and only 60k of that came from their own channels. And look fantastic. Don't host lives that 60k is from something called TikTok Shop Showcase, which to my understanding is kind of like the shopping feature on Instagram where it's a link in their bio which take you to a shopping page that just simply shows you all their product offerings. But still within the app. That means that $700,000 in just 30 days was generated by affiliates. And another really crazy thing about this is that from what I can see on callow data is that most of these sales were coming from micro to mid sized creators with 10 to 50k followers followers. TikTok shop has essentially reinvented infomercials and MLMs where creators no longer have to build up brand relationships over time. And this is having a huge impact on the creator economy because it's no longer about how big your following is. You have micros that are outselling some of the biggest creators on the app. TikTok Shop is essentially like Amazon affiliate on steroids because you don't have to leave the app, you don't have to go through any hoops to start earning. And it really feels like a new wave of this democratization of content where we saw first the death of the celebrity. Well, not the death, but there was no longer a need to become a star to earn money by working with brands. So we had this wave of social media which was kind of like the second wave where you could be a nobody, but you could grow a community on social media which would allow you to start earning endorsement contracts with brands the way that was previously reserved just for a celebrity. But now it's like wave three where like yes, you still need to be generating traffic and a funnel, but you no longer need to worry about having the validity of a huge following to be able to work with brands. Which is crazy when we think back to the Instagram days where your following count was social proof. So there was huge scandals and hundreds of people even on personal accounts that would buy followers, right? Like they would buy that social proof in order to buffer their validity as a creator. Rather than now you could see someone on live with 5K, but if they're doing a makeup look with a product that looks terrific, you can buy it in app and that's it. It's such a wild shift. Also in the background of all of this is that the US Supreme Court planning to close down TikTok in the US in two days time. Which is wild and not what we're discussing right now. But I think we're all well aware now that it's a ever evolving beast. But that's a huge shift And I also wonder what this means for brands that are working with creators now because we're seeing a lot more brands focus on sales figures, right? Like Alex, Ella has always been quoted for her ability to move product. It gets less about brand awareness now and I think it's going to have a really significant impact on the KPIs and the ways that you measure partnering with creators. If you've got these, these creators that have got less than 10,000 followers but they're moving products to bring it Back to the UK piece. Obviously TikTok Shop is booming in markets outside the uk, but it's these young British brands that are building that into their strategies. All of these older, more prestigious brands don't want to be seen as cheap because anytime there's a new platform like this or a new way of revenue generating, it's seen as cheap. Think far as back to the first influencers, the Kardashians and the way the fashion industry saw them. I think this is another version of this with TikTok Shop, where older brands, period, but we're looking at the uk, so a brand like Charlotte Tilbury, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're not doubling down on TikTok Shop because it's seen as cheap, but these younger brands that want to be known as mass and they're meeting their customers where they are, are just dominating. Prestige brands have found their footing and almost own social media for so long in these online spaces through selling a lifestyle and aesthetic. And these young British makeup brands feel so different. Made by Mitchell H and B Cosmetics, the Beauty Crop Doll Beauty are all available at Boots and from what I can tell, none of them have any product or individual units that are sold for more than £20. So making them widely available in stores across the UK, making them relatively affordable and then doubling down on organic social seems to be the magic formula that has allowed these indie brands to grow so considerably without needing to put any time, money or effort into worrying about international expansion. By being so visual on social media, there's some, there's interest that's happened organically, but these brands that are doubling down on the UK is so fun to watch because now as beauty is just so, so saturated, we're seeing more and more pockets of brands that these brands aren't for me, but they don't need to be for me because I'm not the customer, because there's, what was it, 20,000 other British brands that I could shop from that this is the personalization piece that I think the industry is moving in. It's like having to niche down and a less for everyone which hopefully, particularly in the ways of diversity and talking about sustainability and stop brands not trying to do everything at once will be really, really refreshing. And that's what I feel from these brands. Knowing who your customer is and knowing who your target audience is like the most basic marketing concept ever. But as it's getting more crowded, I think these, these indie British brands are such a great example of what that looks like, how that manifests tests. And these brands will feel like a second wave of social media beauty brands to me. Like there are other young brands like Refi Beauty or Merit Beauty and they're doing incredibly well, don't get me wrong. But it feels very glossier, like early D to C, mid to early to mid 2010s and they're still doing really well. And I made a whole episode about the influence of glossier of these types of brands. But these new ways of selling, these new sales channels, the TikTok of it all feels as foreign as D2C did back in the 2000s. I truly feel like we'll be studying these brands in years to come the way that we do glossier now because they just feel like they're at the forefront. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. A long story short is essentially the British beauty consumer loves makeup more than just about anyone else, and brands know that, so they're doubling down as always. That was a ridiculous amount of information, but I do hope it was helpful. Be sure to follow the podcast and leave a rating if you enjoy the show because it really helps the show find new people and I had no idea how much so because guys, last week's episode had a thousand streams. That might not feel like a lot, but that's pretty major when you consider the fact that last week was episode eight and this is an industry resource. It's insanely cool and I'm so glad that it found so many new faces. If you did enjoy this episode, please send it to a Friend post on LinkedIn. It'll make you look really smart in front of your industry peers. Or if that's a bit hardcore, which I understand, why don't you share it to your Instagram story? It'll be gone in 24 hours anyway, right? So you can be like, wow, found this super cool indie podcast. It's so underground and I'm an early adopter, which isn't even a lie, because you are. But share the show if you enjoyed it it really helps us out. And also, while I have you, I wanted to ask a question about sponsorships because the podcast is nowhere near sponsorships, but TikTok is. Woohoo. And I've been thinking, like I always thought being a beauty industry podcast, I'd work with beauty products brands. That's just where my brain went. But that's a major conflict of interest, right? And I really would like to keep these episodes free, which is done by getting sponsors. And this is a beauty podcast. So I always thought, okay, beauty sponsors. But then if I have X brand sponsor the show, are you never going to believe what I say about that brand again? Because I do that with other podcasts and YouTubers and it's incredibly unsustainable. And that's not at all what I want. Brands that I've been working with so far, which is really, really cool, is resources, sources for people that work in marketing. It's mostly tech companies, which makes heaps of sense and I will definitely continue to do that. But what do you feel about beauty partnerships? Because for some reason a Beauty sponsorship on TikTok seems like it makes more sense. I don't know if it's because TikTok feels more fleeting and temporary and a podcast feels like a catalog of work that lives on forever, but I would love to know if you would care because I guess that's the great fallback of this being a beauty business podcast, is that leaning into the business side of things means that that there will be less of a conflict of interest. Like, I would love to partner with Apify or Glimpse or similar web or SEMrush. Like these are the platforms I use every day for industry data. And that makes obvious sense because it's a helpful resource and is hardly going to infringe on the credibility in the beauty space. But I'm not sure. Please let me know what you think. Leave a comment on Substack or send me a DM on Instagram or TikTok or something. And next week we're going to look at luxury beauty versus luxury fashion. Why do luxury fashion houses have beauty brands? Why are new ones launching and others closing down? Rest in peace, Marc Jacobs Beauty what does a beauty brand do for the business of a luxury? Which brands have beauty lines that are more popular than their fashion brands? How do they stay relevant? Why do they all release the same five products and riff off each other? All of that and more in next week's episode. So I'll see you there. Have a wonderful week. Speak soon. This episode was recorded on Gadigal country. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.