On Track To Hit $60M In Sales This Year, Beauty Creations Broadens Its Business With Skincare, Stores, Manufacturing And More

Beauty Creations is creating a much broader business universe.

Known for affordable makeup priced mostly from $4 to $25, the brand has branched into skincare with an equally affordable nine-piece collection at $5 to $14—and that’s hardly all it has happening. It’s planning to expand its store and wholesale network, ramp up in-house manufacturing and enter licensing. Positioned for the pocketbooks of squeezed consumers careful not to fork out their hard-earned money for just any product, the efforts are expected to help Beauty Creations reach $60 million in sales this year, up from $43 million last year.

“You used to go to the store and spend $200, and you would buy groceries for the whole week. Now you go to the store and spend $200, and you only buy things for like three days,” says Beauty Creations CEO and founder Esmeralda Hernandez, who emigrated from Mexico to the United States at 9 years old with her mother. “I really feel I’m aware of that because of what I went through with my mom, and it has always been my biggest focus that we want to make sure when we’re going to bring something to the market that it’s not going to break the bank.”

Market research firm Euromonitor International has discovered that inflationary pressures, while ebbing in the U.S., are causing global beauty consumers to seek cheaper beauty and personal care alternatives. Beauty Creations could benefit from that shopping behavior as its products induce favorable comparisons to those from steeper brands. Its vegan and cruelty-free Korean skincare system housed in playful pink packaging is formulated for the skin type spectrum with ingredient powerhouses like hyaluronic acid and vitamin C.

“We’re going to have those ingredients, but within that budget that we know that our customers feel confident with,” says Hernandez, adding, “It has taken us two years to develop this because I was like, ‘If we’re going to launch something, I want to make sure it’s the best.’ For example, in my case, I had melasma…We did a skin trial, and in the before-and-after pictures, we were glowing. I wanted to make sure that it was going to be something that worked. So, it took us a while to develop this, but I’m so confident with the quality that we have that I was like, ‘OK, we’re ready.’”

She anticipates $14 Filler Free Anti-Aging Eye Cream, $12 Insta Drip Hydrating Serum and $12 Tone Setter Brightening Facial Toner becoming Beauty Creations’ skincare bestsellers. The rest of the skincare products are $14 Legally Glowing Rejuvenating Moisturizer, $11 Tone It Up Toner Pads, $10 Stay Fresh Clarifying Foam Cleanser, $10 So Balm Cleansing Balm, $10 Adios Toxins Exfoliating Peel Gel and $8 The Take Down Micellar Water. A nine-step bundle is $99. Beauty Creations will be growing its skincare range with targeted anti-aging and acne items.

“We want to make sure when we’re going to bring something to the market that it’s not going to break the bank.”

The skincare joins a makeup assortment spanning roughly 500 products. Flawless Stay Powder Foundation and Sweet Lip Oil are among the makeup bestsellers. According to Hernandez, complexion products account for around 70% of makeup sales. Compared to the Instagram beauty influencer heyday in Beauty Creations’ infancy—the brand started in 2016—Hernandez describes popular contemporary complexion makeup as considerably less heavy. The subtlety is driving Beauty Creations’ product pipeline as it’s particularly strong with its core demographic of 13- to 35-year-old consumers. Hernandez says, “Everything that we’re creating for 2024 and 2025 is very clean makeup, really light makeup.”

Social media and Beauty Creations’ two stores are nucleuses of beauty trends. In social media, Hernandez says the brand’s motto, “Own your beauty,” resonates as consumers “want to see real people. You’re not perfect. We don’t want to see that perfect life.” One real person, Jasmine Orlando, better known as Shawty Bae, a Latina TikToker with Bell’s palsy, has been a draw for Beauty Creations. The brand collaborated with Shawty Bae on a $55 Favorites Cuteness Box with six cosmetics products, a sticker sheet, lanyard and tote bag. On May 12, 5,000 people showed up to meet her at Beauty Creations’ Los Cerritos Center store.

Along with Shawty Bae, Beauty Creations has collaborated with content creators and makeup artists Les Do Makeup, Luis Torris, Yeri MUA, Rosy McMichael, Annette69, and Brittany and Briana Murillo. In 2024, Beauty Creations will collaborate with Mexican band Rebelde and make a statement in licensing with a major toy company tie-in.

The brand opened its Los Cerritos Center store in Cerritos, Calif., in 2021, and a store at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Calif., the next year. Last year, the Los Cerritos Center store hit $1.5 million in sales. Hernandez says, “The customers walk in from Sephora, and they just bought a lip oil for $18, and they see our quality, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, it’s $6. Let me go return it.’ Those are things that we have seen with the experience that we have gained.”

“It was so exciting that we bought the new building to be able to tell my mom, ‘Look mom, maybe I’m not in college and maybe I’m not your doctor, but we’re here.’”

Her grand ambition is to open a Beauty Creations store in each state and extend the brand’s stores abroad, too. Franchising is a possibility. Beauty Creations is traveling outside of California with a Texas retail outpost slated for the first quarter of 2024. Florida and New York locations are scheduled to follow it.

Beauty Creations has 38 distributors across the globe. Mexico is the brand’s top market, where it’s sold in the department store Coppel, and the U.S. is its second-largest market. Beauty Creations is available at Urban Outfitters and Aerie in the U.S. and will soon roll out to Forever 21 and H-E-B. Glancing ahead at Beauty Creations’ wholesale roadmap, Hernandez’s dream American partners for it are CVS, Walmart, Walgreens and Target.

Beauty Creations has taken Hernandez far from her humble business roots. Beginning at 12 years old, she hawked merchandise with her mom at swap meets—and was extremely savvy at it. She figured out how to move Barbie doll units better by clothing them in beautiful Mexican handmade dresses. At 19 years old, Hernandez, now a mom of three, got pregnant, and college became untenable for her. Instead, she ventured into the beauty industry by selling perfumes. In 2014, she established the brand BeBella with hair straighteners, but the effective hair straighteners made repeat sales tricky, and she transitioned it to replenishable makeup.

Hernandez introduced Beauty Creations to have a brand distinct from the competition. She recalls, ‘I was like, ‘I’m going to be pink, I’m going to be fun, I’m going to be way different than the other brands.’” The company, which has 70 employees, didn’t receive funding from external investors at the outset—and still hasn’t. Hernandez says, “I feel like we’re in the right space. I love all of my team members. I don’t want someone to come and change that.”

Beauty Creations recently bought a facility in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., a few miles from its current offices in Pico Rivera, that will house its headquarters and manufacturing equipment. The brand also recently bought a manufacturer that handled production for third-party brands, an endeavor Beauty Creations could return to in the future. More immediately, the brand will manufacture its Flawless Stay concealers, primers and foundations, and improve their formulas by infusing them with skincare ingredients.

“It was so exciting that we bought the new building to be able to tell my mom, ‘Look mom, maybe I’m not in college and maybe I’m not your doctor, but we’re here,’” says Hernandez, whose mom Hortencia today works with her at Beauty Creations.