Model, actor and influencer Derek Chadwick is fully aware there isn’t exactly a shortage of beauty products, but he thinks there are a handful that should be improved, the first being lip plumper. He’s not a fan of existing ones that are super glossy or leave his lips dry.

Chadwick’s new beauty brand, Chaddy, is starting by tackling his lip plumper problems with its debut product, $38 Matte Lip Plumper, in the hopes that other people will relate to them. Given his 1.4 million followers on Instagram, there’s a chance at least a few will try it.

“I was thinking a good idea for a product would be something I could wear every single day to the gym or wear to get groceries or traveling, and I wouldn’t have to wipe it off,” says Chadwick. “I just wanted to make something that was super moisturizing, but also would plump your lips and was very natural.”

Skincare is next on Chaddy’s merchandise roadmap—and Chadwick is bullish on the brand finding a wide audience for its products. “If I could summarize Chaddy in a sentence, it would be a clean beauty brand that is inclusive and non-gender specific,” he says. “I know everyone says that their beauty brands are made for everyone, but it really is made for everyone.”

Chadwick elaborates, “I really love the idea of enhancing your own natural features. So, for me, Chaddy is all about embracing your natural beauty. The point of the lip plumper is to enhance your natural features, and it’s the same thing for the products that we have coming out in the spring. It’s about wanting to feel the most confident.”

Chaddy’s Matte Lip Plumper goes on wet, but dries matte. The formula contains peptides and hyaluronic acid, skincare ingredients that contribute to its $38 price tag. It also has capsaicin, a compound found in chili peppers, for the plumping effect. “It brings more blood flow to your lips and makes your lips super pink, which is also nice,” says Chadwick. “It was important that, in the long term of using it, the product would help the structure of your lips as well—and those ingredients are expensive.”

‘To determine the price of Chaddy’s Matte Lip Plumper, Chadwick examined comparative products on the market. Lawless Beauty’s Forget The Filler Gloss, for example, is priced primarily from $26 to $38. Dr. Dennis Gross’s DermInfusions Plump + Repair Lip Treatment with Hyaluronic Acid is $45; Too Faced’s Lip Injection Maximum Plump Extra Strength Hydrating Lip Plumper is $33; and Buxom’s Plump Shot Collagen-Infused Lip Serum Plumper is $28.

DermInfusions™ Plump + Repair Lip Treatment with Hyaluronic Acid

DermInfusions™ Plump + Repair Lip Treatment with Hyaluronic Acid

DermInfusions™ Plump + Repair Lip Treatment with Hyaluronic Acid

Set to launch on Nov. 8, Chaddy’s Matte Lip Plumper features a vanilla peppermint scent. Two additional scents will be released shortly thereafter. Chadwick plans to unveil a bundle of three or four skincare products in the spring. He anticipates the brand’s customers out of the gate will align with his followers, who are mostly men aged 18 to 34 years old from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil, and broaden out from them as it evolves.

Chadwick declined to share how much it cost to start Chaddy. He says he didn’t partner with a brand incubator or development company that teams up with influencers or celebrities to produce it. His goal is to eventually place Chaddy on Sephora’s shelves, although there has been a number of celebrity- and influencer-connected brands that haven’t been successful at the retailer.

“I know everyone says that their beauty brands are made for everyone, but it really is made for everyone.”

Selfless by Hyram, the brand affiliated with beauty influencer Hyram Yarbro, and Item Beauty, the brand linked to TikTok star Addison Rae, departed Sephora. Selfless by Hyram is now available at Target. At Chaddy, Chadwick says, “Our game plan is to take the data from our first product launch, get investors on board to help us scale and go from there.”

Chadwick’s big break came in 2017 when Urban Outfitters slid into his DMs to solicit him for a campaign. “It was a 360 campaign.” I took over their Instagram, and I was in store and online,” he says. “That was the catalyst for everything.”

The Urban Outfitters campaign led to his Instagram followers ballooning to 150,000 and inquiries from apparel retailers and brands the likes of American Eagle, Lacoste, Aeropostale, Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis and Abercrombie & Fitch pouring in. To pursue modeling and acting, he moved from Long Island to Los Angeles.

He’s appeared in the publications Gay Times, Male Model Scene, Interview Magazine and CR Fashion Book, and he’s also been on the runway for the brand Moschino and had parts in the movies and television shows “Hollywood,” “Blue Bloods,” “Scream Queens,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” and “A Jenkins Family Christmas.”

In 2022, Chadwick modeled in the campaign for Patrick Ta’s Major Skin Crème Foundation launch, a move that introduced him to the beauty world. He reflects, “We always wore makeup for jobs and events, but that was the first time when I realized, oh, wow, you can actually wear makeup for everyday stuff.”

Furthering his foray into beauty, he’s created posts for Instagram Reels centered on skincare and minimalist makeup. The content that tends to perform the best showcases products that cause notable changes. Chadwick says, “I did a video for a bronzer [from the brand Good Weird], which I mixed with a moisturizer, and you could clearly see the tan before and after. The video did really, really well, and [the product] ended up selling out.” He’s adopting a similar content approach at Chaddy. Chadwick says, “I want to show people the change that the product will give in everyday life.”

Chadwick’s co-founder at Chaddy is Emmett Enriques, owner of the Hawaiian clothing company Black Sand Beach Apparel. The pair will seed Chaddy’s merchandise to their network of influencer friends to get the word out and “hit social media hard,” according to Enriques, who says, “That’s where Derek shines the most.”