Two years after Morphe owner Forma Brands emerged from bankruptcy, the brand is returning to form.

Available at Ulta Beauty and in direct-to-consumer distribution, its year-to-date sales have increased 33% and comparable-store sales are up a double-digit percentage, according to Morphe CEO Simon Cowell. While the brand declined to share exact revenue figures, Doug Jacob, co-founder of &Vest, the investment and incubation platform that bought Forma Brands in 2023 for $690 million along with Jefferies Finance and Cerberus Capital Management, says it’s profitable and could approach its pre-bankruptcy sales in three to five years.

The new Morphe—Forma Brands as an entity is now for legal purposes only—has a restructured workforce, assortment and influencer marketing to play into its product strengths and strategize for a social media landscape where influence is highly dispersed. If it continues to execute, the brand could serve as a blueprint for distressed beauty assets looking to shake off past travails. Beautycounter and Avon Products Inc., the American holding company for the brand outside the United States, are among the beauty companies aiming for post-bankruptcy revivals.

Morphe’s descent into bankruptcy was propelled by bad timing (the pandemic caused a makeup crash) and bets on buzzy names that fizzled or put it in the crosshairs of scandal. In 2019, the year General Atlantic acquired a majority stake in the brand at a $2.2 billion valuation, publication Women’s Wear Daily reported its sales were on track to hit $500 million, but media outlet The Business of Fashion chronicled their drop to $295 million by 2021.

Originally founded in 2008 by siblings Chris and Linda Tawil selling makeup brushes, Morphe morphed into Forma Brands in 2020, a broad enterprise with retail stores—it had around 20 in the United States that shuttered in 2023—and a slew of brands, mainly attached to influencers and celebrities. It was previously available at Sephora and Revolve.

James Charles, Jeffree Star, Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, Jaclyn Hill and Ariana Grande were in the Morphe universe, the latter two with brands Jaclyn Cosmetics and R.e.m. Beauty that, respectively, closed and secured investment from Sandbridge Capital, Strand Equity and others. Morphe 2, a sister brand to Morphe once affiliated with the D’Amelio sisters, has been folded into Morphe. Other brands like Lipstick Queen have been shed.

Morphe’s transformation has happened in stages, starting with an overhaul of its personnel in 2023, when the publication Glossy documented it eliminated 23 positions across social media, creative, marketing, influencer relations and communications. The same year, Cowell, former president of Forma Brands and CEO of Bare Escentuals, assumed the position of CEO that had been held by Cliff Moskowitz.

Today, Morphe has 225 global employees. It’s brought on Scott Dicus, former CFO of Marcal Manufacturing, as CFO, Adam Lockwood, former VP of operations at Unilever Prestige, as global supply chain officer, and Deanna Chechile, former general counsel at Bold Threads, as chief legal and people officer. Jessica Northen, formerly SVP of commercial, has been promoted to chief commercial officer.

The second stage has focused on products, centered on everyday essentials and replenishable items like foundation. The logo and packaging have changed, with the latter updating and moving from matte black to lighter colors. Cowell explains the changes are to visually communicate to consumers that Morphe had been “revitalized.”

Morphe’s selection of makeup brushes has been trimmed down from approximately 400 items to 34 and revised. The brand worked with makeup artists to create new custom brushes based on their feedback, and each brush has descriptive labels indicating its use. Brushes currently account for 25% of sales, per Cowell.

He says, “The idea with this pipeline was to balance expanding our core, launching new-to-Morphe categories and modernizing our equity categories like brushes and eyeshadows.”

This year, Morphe is launching 12 products, half it considers A-level launches and half it considers secondary launches. The brand’s recent launches include Sudden Heat Creamy Bronzer Stick, Cheek Thrills Multi-Finish Face Trio and Hot Honeys Lip Plumping Oil. Morphe’s goal for 2025 was for 30% of its retail sales to be driven by new products. It’s on pace to exceed that.

Hot Honeys Plumping Lip Oil

Morphe’s influencer marketing approach has drastically changed, too. It has two in-house influencer managers tasked with handling up to 500 influencer relationships each with micro to mega followings. Since 2023, Morphe has dedicated 18% to 20% of its sales to marketing, encompassing influencer marketing. The influencer marketing team sent 3,000 product mailers for the launch of Cheek Thrills versus 150 to 200 mailers in 2024 for similar high-priority launches.

Cowell says, “We want to continue to build that network and group of representatives. We’re sort of testing how to incentivize our internal teams to build, measure and grow engagement and earned media value with influencers.”

Morphe also began using artificial intelligence in early 2025 to monitor reviews of and commentary on the brand on social media to inform its product development. Morphe has tapped &Vest-owned &Code, a data sciences and machine learning technology company, for its AI efforts. &Code’s team contains former employees of AI company Beauty Labs International, which &Vest was an early investor in and biotechnology company Amyris bought before filing for bankruptcy.

“There’s always been a process [of social listening], but how do we streamline that process and use technology to give us better insights?” said Jacobs. “Step one was validating that our AI models would at least get the output that the analog model was able to do. Now we’re moving on to taking social listening and internet scraping to give us more insight around product development.”