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Selena Gomez sells $100 million of blush a year as brand booms


Selena Gomez keeps beating the odds.
The 30-year-old has avoided the potential pitfalls of child stardom to become an even bigger celebrity as an adult, with a career that’s spanned nine top-10 pop hits, more than two-dozen platinum or gold singles, and a star role in Hulu’s hit series Only Murders in the Building.

And it’s her make-up brand that’s breaking the bank. Rare Beauty has surged in popularity since its debut less than three years ago, despite a fallout at many celebrity-backed cosmetic lines. The company has succeeded in the $US250 billion ($366 billion) global beauty industry by creating simple, moderately-priced make-up, and leveraging Gomez’s immense popularity on platforms such as TikTok.
“People are looking for performance and value in their products, which Rare does really well,” says Sable Yong, a beauty writer based in New York. “Yes, it’s cute. Yes, Selena Gomez is the founder. But even if she wasn’t in the picture, they’re well-formulated products that perform really well at a fairly attainable price point.”

The brand is on pace in 2023 to triple last year’s sales. In 2022, the company moved 3.1 million units of its best-selling blush. The product retails for $US23 ($34), which means it alone generated about $US70 million in revenue. (The company declined to provide additional financial details, including its investor roster.)
Celebrity attachment is no guarantee of a hit. Consumers can be fickle, and lots of brands tied to famous people have fizzled after a strong start. Earlier this year, Kristen Bell shut down her skincare line. Sephora stopped selling the brands of TikTok celebs Addison Rae and Hyram Yarbro. Ariana Grande paid $US15 million to buy the physical assets of her company, r.e.m. beauty, from Forma Brands LLC, whose big bet on celebrity influencers soured and pushed it into bankruptcy.

“There’s less forgiveness for a celebrity brand,” says Rich Gersten, the co-founder and managing partner at True Beauty Ventures, a private equity firm specialising in beauty and self-care. “If the product wasn’t good, it wouldn’t have scaled or stayed scaled.”
Rare, which said Gomez wasn’t available for an interview, didn’t focus on chasing trends, such as a gimmicky eyeshadow palettes with dozens of colours. It instead created accessible and easy-to-use items, including a lip liner for $US15 and a liquid foundation in 48 shades for $US30.

The brand was also founded with a social cause at its core, a hallmark of younger brands but not industry heavyweights. Gomez has been an advocate for mental health, including publicly discussing her own struggles. Rare pledged to dedicate 1 per cent of sales to its in-house fund, having raised at least $US5 million so far, per the company’s 2022 social impact report.
Rare is part of a growing collection of business ventures for Gomez. She also co-founded Wondermind, a start-up focused on improving mental health that was valued last year at $US100 million; has executive produced shows on Netflix and HBO Max; and has formed partnerships with brands such as Puma.
A lot of Rare’s success is credited to Gomez’s fan base, which includes more than 400 million Instagram followers, but the brand also has an executive team made of industry veterans. Joyce Kim, Rare’s chief product officer and a former executive at L’Oreal’s Nyx Professional Makeup, was tasked by Gomez with creating a line that could hold up at one of her red carpet appearances as well as in her customers’ everyday lives.
“It has to feel weightless and be easy to apply,” Kim says. “But it’s gotta hold up for events.”
On the marketing side, Rare has excelled at creating social media buzz. The brand has more than three million followers on TikTok, six million on Instagram, and tailors content across its platforms. Googly-eye stickers appear on a blush tube for the TikTok audience; posts focusing on mental health have particular resonance on Instagram. Not being afraid to experiment has helped, according to Katie Welch, Rare’s chief marketing officer.
Gomez also touts the brand and gives tutorials on her accounts. In the early months following the brand’s launch, she recorded hours and hours of herself doing her make-up for one of her TV shows, the HBO Max cooking series Selena + Chef. The team then cut those sessions down to clips that often last no longer than a minute. Other snippets feature Gomez lip-synching to popular TikTok sounds, with commentary about Rare’s products.
“The reception from influencers and online users has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Artemis Patrick, Sephora’s global chief merchandising officer.
The brand continues to add products, such as a gel eyeliner, and expanding – distribution recently reached Indonesia and India. Other hits include a powder highlighter, which served as a throwback to the gleaming highlighters of the 2010s. When it began selling, Mehdi Mehdi, Rare’s chief digital officer, realised the brand could revive trends, not just create new ones.
“We had been told the era of powder highlighter was over,” Mehdi says. “We have the ability to buck the trends.”

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‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

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Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

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‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

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