At Educated Mess, Cosmetic Chemist Alex Padgett Creates Serious Skincare For Consumers Who Like To Have Fun

During her nearly four years working in the beauty manufacturing sector at Botanical Science and CBI Laboratories, cosmetic chemist Alex Padgett often complained to her friends that beauty brands rely on buzzwords for marketing and skimp on education. One friend, Catherine Chick, challenged her to do something about it. Together, they came up with Educated Mess.

They spent $100,000 from their personal savings to create the brand, which underwent a refresh unveiled in February of this year, with gold-stabilized vitamin C as its hero ingredient. Introduced to the ingredient during her time in manufacturing, Padgett believes Educated Mess was the first brand to put in an order for it, followed by Murad a few days later.

“It far outperformed regular ascorbic acid and other stabilized derivatives of vitamin C at very low levels,” she says. “But when I was trying to tell brands that I was working with, they were like, ‘Well, our customers just want to see 20% vitamin C.’ They want to see the numbers that support the technology that has been out since the ‘90s, and I’m like, ‘That’s the flip phone, we’ve got the iPhone here.’ But they didn’t know how to market it to consumers in a way that consumers would understand and pick up on just how great it is.”

Educated Mess’s product lineup contains three products: $85 Golden Hour Gold-Stabilized Vitamin C Serum, $69 Hair of The Dog Energizing Recovery Mask and $69 Sake Bomb Targeted Peptide Hydro-Burst Moisturizer. Chick describes the brand’s core customers as “educated” and “very accomplished women,” but they’re not afraid to have fun. She says they’re “girls who go out at night, the girls who need a refresher in the morning.” Chick remarks, “We have a Hair of The Dog mask for a reason.”

Padgett says, “We wanted a skincare line that would support a wide range of lifestyles. You’ll always hear, ‘OK, wash your face before you go to bed, drink a lot of water, eat proper foods for your skin health,’ but not everybody wants to do that. So, we wanted to have products that could help a little bit with some of the symptoms of your lifestyle.”

Padgett and Chick embody their brand’s core customers. Chick, previously a field sales trainer at Align Technology, handles the business side of the brand. Padgett oversees product development and formulation. Chick lovingly describes Padgett as “extremely educated in this space and often the smartest person in most rooms, but she’s also so fun, she’s messy, she’s the coolest girl at the party.”

Knowing that her personality would take to TikTok, Chick encouraged Padgett to start posting on the platform after Educated Mess was struggling to realize returns on Instagram and Facebook advertising. Padgett was initially hesitant. She wasn’t sure what she could contribute to the many conversations happening on TikTok. Padgett reflects, “I also wondered if people really cared what I had to say. I was having imposter syndrome a little bit.”

“We have a Hair of The Dog mask for a reason.”

Turns out TikTok users care a great deal about what Padgett has to say. She began posting regularly on the platform in May 2022 and has since gained 71,600 followers. The content that tends to perform the best for Padgett isn’t necessarily about Educated Mess. Rather, popular content shows her breaking down the ingredients in high-end skincare products and highlighting affordable alternatives with similar actives. One of her most-watched videos, for example, suggests cheaper alternatives to the products influencer and Dibs Beauty founder Courtney Shields mentioned are a part of her skincare routine. The video has garnered 540,000 views.

“What we’ve realized is talking about skincare online is not the same as a clothing brand where you see something, it goes viral on TikTok, and you’re like, oh cool, purchase,” says Padgett. “People want to know the science behind it.”

TikTok has boosted Educated Mess’s brand awareness and sales, and it’s expanded its audience. “I thought only people in the 18 to 24 range are really there, and they might not have the money to spend on a higher end skincare line, but, when I look at the demographic of my following, a lot of them are 40 and up, which is fun to see,” says Padgett. Chick mentions consumers 40 years old and above enjoy providing feedback. She says, “We love them because they leave reviews.”

Chick adds that more millennials have gravitated toward Educated Mess as a result of its refresh. Creative agency YUNGBLD brought the brand originally launched in November 2021 from what she refers to as “hot mess” to the current version of Educated Mess with eye-catching packaging and imagery. The rebrand cost Educated Mess $45,000, and it spent another $20,000 updating inventory.

Phase two of the rebrand will roll out this summer. It includes upping the size of Golden Hour Gold-Stabilized Vitamin C Serum from .6 ounces to 1 ounce and switching Sake Bomb Targeted Peptide Hydro-Burst Moisturizer from a jar to consumer-friendly pump packaging. The brand will kick off a campaign as well.

The biggest piece of advice Padgett has for fellow founders is to delegate tasks when possible. “A lot of your stress is going to be relieved if you can find people to be really good at the things that you don’t know how to do, instead of trying to drive yourself crazy and figuring out exactly how to wear all the hats,” she says. “Sometimes someone’s going to be better at that job.” Educated Mess has recently tapped freelancers to help with marketing and graphic design.

Padgett has around 40 to 50 products already developed, but they’ve been put on hold because of the rebrand. She and Chick hope to raise venture capital in order reach future goals such as getting into retail and, down the line, owning a manufacturing facility to cut out the middlemen and improve the brand’s margins. That way, Padgett can bring the at-home lab she’s shown off on TikTok to a larger space.