Founded in 2014 by siblings Laura and John Nelson, ColourPop has maintained its online lure across lip, face, eye and cheek categories for the month of October, ahead of established brands like Anastacia Beverly Hills, Benefit Cosmetics and Urban Decay.
Findings from beauty intelligence firm Cherry Pick’s monthly analysis – based on an artificial intelligence (AI) program tracking real-time consumer engagement in beauty – showed ColourPop Cosmetics was also just ahead of fellow Indie brand Huda Beauty.
Successful social presence, influencer campaigns, collaborations and low price points
“ColourPop is quickly becoming the beauty brand to beat,” Cherry Pick wrote in its report.
“…In October, beauty buyers freshened up their make-up routine by gravitating towards trusted brands like ColourPop that offer a wide array of products at budget-friendly prices and eyeshadow palettes that provide more bang for their buck,” it said.
ColourPop also ranked first for purchase intent in Cherry Pick’s September analysis. The brand’s top trending products were its pressed powder blush; midnight masquerade palette; lux liquid lip and creme lux lipstick.
Speaking to CosmeticsDesign, Justin Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Cherry Pick, said: "ColourPop has consistently been a top brand in color cosmetics this year. ColourPop lives on social like their customers and successfully creates high product demand with their frequent release schedule, successful influencer campaigns, and timely collaborations, notably their ongoing Disney collections. Their low price point often provides more affordable dupes to higher end brands and gives consumers, Gen Z especially, an easy purchase point."
So, are there any wider learnings from this month's Cherry Pick report?
Beauty experimentation and viral social media
Cherry Pick’s report – divided into cheek, eye, face and lip – identified some clear trending product attributes and formats.
Eye color palettes, for example, were a clear key trend, with all top five products in the eye category falling under this description. This, the report said, was driven by a desire among customers “looking to experiment with their everyday look”. No individual color eyeshadows featured in October’s top five ranking.
“These products offer buyers a rainbow of colors, from neutral classics to neon hues, without the commitment that comes with investing in a single share or the cost,” Cherry Pick said.
For the face category, Urban Decay’s make-up setting spray shot to the top spot in October, largely driven by “some hilarious viral reviews from women” showing how well the product worked, the report said – indicative of the power around virality and social media engagement.
‘Predictive intelligence’ for beauty brands
Speaking to sister site CosmeticsDesign-Europe back in September, Stewart explained that the whole point of Cherry Pick's reporting and AI program was to build “predictive intelligence for product development”.
“The goal is to enable a brand, manufacturer or retailer to actually measure how much demand consumers are showing for products before those products actually exist. From a holy grail standpoint, it’s like ‘before I allocate all these resources, is that actually even a product category that this specific target audience would want to buy?’”
By tracking online engagement, interest and purchase intent in real-time, Stewart said brands and beauty manufacturers could follow “demand-driven decision making” instead.
