Body care brand Maëlys has embarked on its most ambitious product launch yet, a collection of six body serums, and its most ambitious campaign yet to get people chatting about and buying them.
The $5 million campaign taps hundreds of celebrities and influencers, from nano to mega, including Jackie Aina, Charli D’Amelio’s mother Heidi D’Amelio and “Selling Sunset” star Heather Rae El Moussa, and skincare professionals like Bella Hadid’s aesthetician Kristyn Smith and dermatologists who are creating educational Instagram content. Along with social media content, it involves 13 advertisements that premiered last month on bus stops, billboards, Citi Bike stands and other spots across Los Angeles and New York City.
Priced at $69 each for a 3.5-oz. bottle, the body serums—cellulite-toning Re-Lure, plumping Re-Vamp, blemish-busting Re-Set, brightening Re-Shine, resurfacing Re-Start and wrinkle-fighting Re-Solve—contain hyaluronic acid with at least two complementary active ingredients in a mix Maëlys calls hyaluronic fusion. They’re available on the brand’s website and will enter its retail partners early next year.
Already, CEO Rom Ginzburg reports Maëlys’ body serums campaign is exceeding expectations. It’s led to a 50% jump in visitors to the brand’s website and one of its best weeks of sales ever. “It was important for us to do such a big campaign because it’s a strategic launch for the brand,” says Ginzburg. “We launched body serums in the past, but not six personalized, different body serums, which give women options to choose from and build a routine just like they can do it for the face.”
Co-founder and CMO Yariv Citron adds that the campaign has yielded $1.5 million in earned media value so far. He emphasizes Maëlys doesn’t measure its success solely by return on ad spend and investment. Citron says, “We’re very good at measuring ROI, we’re a DTC brand, but it was mostly important to us to educate the market and to use these key opinion leaders to show women that just like they’re treating their face, they should do the same for the body, and we have solutions for the body.”
Maëlys intentionally elected to work with Heidi D’Amelio rather than one of her very famous daughters for the campaign. While many beauty brands are obsessed with capturing the attention and dollars of gen Z consumers, the brand’s customer base is primarily women over 30 years old, and it’s bullish on the demographic. All of the influencers and celebrities in the campaign speak to it.
“We launched body serums in the past, but not six personalized, different body serums, which give women options to choose from and build a routine just like they can do it for the face.”
“We’re talking about strong women from the ages of 30-plus who have careers, they love beauty, they’re all about empowering other women,” says Citron. Ginzburg chimes in that the group is “more loyal, they have more free money. They value premium new products. We are with them for a much longer period of time…taking someone from 25 all the way to 45, being able to cater to different needs and different concerns. For me and for us as a company, it’s much more appealing to grow with her and provide her more and more solutions.”
Maëlys itself is growing at a healthy pace. Since breaking into the United States in 2019, sales for the brand founded in Tel Aviv have increased over 100% per year. In 2022, it surpassed $125 million in sales. The first six months of 2023 have been Maëlys’ strongest since it launched in 2017.
In direct-to-consumer distribution for most of its existence, Maëlys is known for its targeted body care products, notably the viral B-Tight Lift & Firm Booty Mask. It extended from DTC to Ulta Beauty last year and Shopper’s Drug Mart in Canada this year. In 2021, Maëlys secured a minority investment from Ritual backer Norwest Ventures.
Ginzburg points out the brand’s top line growth is paired with profitability. “We always maintain very healthy levels of profitability, which is very unique to the DTC space,” he says. “You are going to see lots of DTC brands that are either stuck, or, as they scale, they start losing money if they didn’t lose it before. That was never the game that we played.”
Although the brand is recognized for B Tight, Ginzburg maintains it doesn’t account for the lion’s share of Maëlys’ sales. “We have a very wide range of hero products,” he says. “Each one of them caters to a different need, body concern, a different type of customer who’s looking after those specific products.”
Ginzburg says investors reach out to Maëlys daily, but it isn’t anxious to strike an investment deal right now. “We don’t need it,” he shares. “We’ve been disciplined from day one. Even before we had investors, we were very disciplined. We are focused on building the brand, building the business, expanding it, growing it. We recently entered retail. It’s a whole new channel for us. We are all about cracking this channel and growing it. I think that we can be very appealing in this environment because of our discipline and because of our results.”
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