When it comes to creating culturally relevant, cult-followed beauty brands, Jaimee Lupton is on a roll. 

During WWD’s Beauty CEO Summit, Lupton revealed her secret sauce for building mass brands for the next generation of beauty consumers, specifically Monday Haircare, Being Haircare and Daise Beauty. 

“Our approach is different to a lot of the heritage mass players,” Lupton said. “We operate with a direct-to-consumer mindset, but we show up with mass distribution space [including Walmart and Target]. We are digital first, not only in data and manufacturing but with our digital teams.” 

As a longtime beauty consumer, Lupton first recognized the pitfalls of the industry, most notably that there was still a level of exclusivity when it came to the hair category, which led to Monday Haircare. Lupton recalled walking the hair care aisles of mass retail with her husband and business partner Nick Mowbray and being disappointed with the offering.

“Everything was screaming at us,” she said. “We wanted something that whispered with a Millennial aesthetic….The white space [was] there wasn’t a luxury look and feel hair care brand with a viral buzz that was in brick-and-mortar.” 

Monday Haircare amassed viral success, thanks to its aesthetic bottle, quality formulas, affordability and engaging content, and Lupton began identifying adjacent white spaces that have driven her other businesses. 

For Daise Beauty, Lupton tapped into the tween beauty craze after noticing white space for brands that were actually created for this demographic, which she said is expected to hold $5.5 trillion of spending. She launched Daise Beauty as a fragrance and body care brand for the Monday Haircare user’s little sister. Her goal was to create something that was age appropriate yet aspirational. 

“The crossover between toys and beauty is stronger than ever,” Lupton said. “We wanted to lean into this, something I’ve coined the ‘toyification of beauty,’ resulting in brands built for them and encouraging them to play in new forms, formats, lower barrier to entry and a better price point.” 

Then came Being Haircare. The goal was to address the need for effective solutions for all people and all hair types. “The brand is a truly inclusive Gen Z hair care brand for both females and males, all genders, which didn’t exist at mass,” Lupton said. “The formulas were targeted for each of the hair types 1A to 4C.”

While all three brands are addressing market gaps with their formulas and packaging, the social media content strategy is equally as crucial, particularly given the ages they are targeting. “You need to move at the speed of light,” Lupton said. “You need to be at the front of cultural trends. You need to think about how am I feeding this content engine. Just last year, our group presented over 10,000 pieces of content.”  

In order to make content that is relevant, Lupton analyzes relevant data to discover what the user will like, collaborates closely with TikTok on what’s performing well and adjusts their strategy accordingly. Through this approach, she has discovered several ways “to persuade the customer to buy: showing credibility, offering solutions, demonstrating likeability through our content and showing the proof that our product works.” 

Lupton added that in order to create content these consumers will like, the team has actually tapped into these demographics. “Legacy players often struggle to resource their teams accordingly,” she said. “We hire talent that reflects the demographic of the brands we are building: Gen Zs and Millennials. They have a seat at the table and they’re becoming the new leaders.”