Before dropping its Cooling Water Jelly Tints on Feb. 6, Milk Makeup‘s internal team knew they had a potential rocket ship on their hands. They just didn’t realize how fast sales would hit the stratosphere.
“We had early indicators out of the gate that it was going to be successful,” said Milk’s chief executive officer, Tim Coolican, of the product that hit virality even before launch, racking up a wait list of more than 60,000 before the shelves were even stocked.
“Our internal team was very excited and our retail partners were very excited — they kept coming back with this kind of, ‘This is unlike anything we’ve every seen before,’ sort of energy,” he continued, of the Jell-O-like hybrid cheek and lip tints conceived by cofounder and head of product development, Dianna Ruth.
“Dianna had talked about Push Pops and Jell-O — things that her kids were excited about, but that also were kind of nostalgic for her and that had that sort of, ‘I can’t help but want to grab it,’ aspect to them,” said Coolican. “We forecasted that it was going to be the biggest launch in the brand’s history — it just became the biggest launch much faster than we thought it would.”
Indeed, shoppers couldn’t help but grab them. And prod them. And, in the case of a viral TikTok video by user @imhannahcho, take a (literal) bite out of the $24 jelly tints, available in coral, pink, berry and red. When the product sold out within 24 hours of launching online at sephora, the scene at Milk’s New York office, “was almost like what I imagined it would be like working at a tech company,” recalled Coolican.
Despite cycling in and out of stock during their first three months, the tints sold roughly 400,000 units during the period, or an average of about one tint every 20 seconds globally.
Equally as significant — people were buying all four shades in one fell swoop.
“On a shaded launch, we might typically see people buying one or two shades, but there was an element of hype and collectibility around [this launch] where people just wanted to see them all and try them all — we saw a lot of content where people were using all four shades together or separately to create different looks — it was pretty unique,” said Coolican.
“TikTok has completely revolutionized the way we do product development,” said Leigh Winters, vice president of innovation at contract and private label manufacturer Mana Products.
For one, she said, “gone are the days of multiyear product development timelines — the [fastest] brands are going from concept to launch within nine to 12 months.”
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Senior Sales And Education Executive at Milk Makeup
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