Brendan McDowell: ‘Online marketing has been huge’

Can you tell us a little bit about your background in cosmetics and what led you to start this company? I worked for LivingSocial for five years, working with a lot of beauty salons. At the time, I noticed that there was a gap in the market for really strong eyebrow products. It was just when eyebrows were starting to trend again, so our first product was an eyebrow pencil with a semi-permanent powder. It was revolutionary at the time and gave the perfect shape brows and perfect fullness, but the best thing about it was that it was also waterproof, smudge-proof and sweat-proof. When I first saw people's reaction when they got their perfect brows and the thrill it gave them, it led me into developing even more cosmetics products. Since the company began in 2012, how did you manage to expand so fast across 100 countries and over 2,500 retailers? It was step by step. Initially, we started off like market traders, driving around the UK and going from event to event to sell from the back of a van. The couple of big steps we took to get to where we are – firstly, we started selling into small, indie retailers in Northern Ireland. We then went on to Dragons Den in Southern Ireland, which exploded the brand across Ireland. From that, I knew we'd created a wave and I thought, “how do we stay on this?” What we did was create one of the first make-up collaborations. We were one of the first brands and Instagram makeup artists to come together and create a product. The collaboration we did was with LMD, a Northern Irish girl, and the following year we collaborated with Stacey Marie on the Carnival palette. That's what took the business on a global joinery; we had all the big Youtubers like Jeffery Star, Nikki Tutorials and Jaclyn Hill all using the palette, and that’s what helped us on the international scene. What part has online marketing played in getting the business to the place it is now? Online marketing has been huge - Instagram was the biggest thing for us when we were expanding with the Carnival palette. It was all instagrammers, Youtubers and make-up artists online. It was a massive part and its changed so much in the last 12 months, because now it has all moved to TikTok. TikTok is what has made our best-selling product – which is Chroma – explode. We now sell one bottle every three minutes. When you first started out, did you have a specific customer in mind, and how did that evolve over the years? No, in the early days when we were more or less market traders, it was all about the demonstration; it didn't matter what age you were, we just wanted really good before and after shots. For example, when you tried the eyebrow pencil, you got that immediate effect. We wanted to demonstrate a really good product, rather than a certain type of customer. Can you tell us about ‘Made Up in Belfast’ and the reason behind it? A production company in Belfast had been reading my story and the company’s growth path in a local newspaper, so she researched me on Instagram four years ago and said, “I would love to possibly talk about doing a show”. It took years to do it. It was only meant to be in BBC Northern Ireland, but when they did the preview, BBC Three wanted it as well. We were commissioned with 10 episodes, which is one of the biggest commissions on a new TV show that’s been granted. Do you think the BBC show has raised the brand’s profile, and why? Yes, I had 15 minutes in Irish Dragons Den four years ago and it exploded the brand across Ireland, so we are hoping with a ten-part reality show, it will have massive brand awareness for us What makes celebrity endorsements and MUA collaborations so effective in selling make-up? Celebrity endorsements are good for brand awareness because you're reaching a massive audience. The celebrity side is good for massive views because they have massive followings. The artistry thing also keeps us as a pro-makeup brand, so we use a few of them for different strategies. The artistry-lead products, which our artists have a lot more involvement in the development of, means that we are actually creating amazing products that are MUA-approved. From the initial collaboration in which we used MUAs, we actually then took in internal MUAs in our development team, so everything we now create is MUA-approved. Is there anything new coming up for the brand and can you tell us about it? Two things – we have a grudge style collection palette coming out, which is very on trend next quarter and the other big thing next quarter will be reopening our store in Ibiza. We have a mega store there and we will be having a star-studded opening party for the store, and a big opening party at Ocean Beach.