Sacheu Beauty’speel-off lip stain Lip Liner Stay-N, which has drawn 800 million views on TikTok, is going from FYP to IRL.
The viral product is heading to Ulta Beauty stores chain-wide in the shades p-INKED and HEY-zel after premiering on Ulta’s website September last year in five shades priced at $12 each and $30 for a bundle of three. It will join additional products from the brand stocked on Ulta’s shelves, including $32 Stainless Steel Gua Sha, $35 Dual-Sided Stainless Steel Beauty Roller and $38 Stainless Steel Body Gua Sha. Its $22 Slick Skin Essential Lipid Serum will be making its in-store debut at Ulta, too, as the power of non-lipstick lip products persists.
Sacheu’s partnership with Ulta started online in 2021, and the brand from beauty influencer Sarah Cheung landed in 400 Ulta stores in 2022 before expanding to 550 stores in early 2023 and throughout the retailer’s roughly 1,400 stores by August 2023. To support Lip Liner Stay-N’s Ulta rollout, parent company Gloss Ventures is tapping 200 TikTok content creators who’ve been loyal fans of the brand to spread the word.
Cheung will promote Lip Liner Stay-N’s Ulta availability on her social media accounts and attend an event in the spring at an Ulta store in Los Angeles to demonstrate the product, which works by tracing the lips with its formula, letting it dry for 10 to 20 minutes and peeling off the film it leaves to result in long-lasting color. She has 334,000 followers on TikTok and 292,000 followers on Instagram.
Lip Liner Stay-N has been challenging to keep in stock since it launched on Sacheu’s site February last year. Besides Ulta, Sacheu is carried by Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, C.O. Bigelow and Poosh, and it’s on TikTok Shop and Amazon. In January, a Lip Liner Stay-N was sold every 18 seconds online. The same month, Sacheu moved 150,000 Lip Liner Stay-N units via TikTok Shop, and it was the third bestselling product on the TikTok e-commerce engine behind haircare tools from Beachwaver and Wavytalk. In February, Lip Liner Stay-N’s velocity increased, and one of the product sold every 16 seconds.On Amazon, it oscillates between being No. 1 and No. 2 in the lip liner category.
The digital frenzy over Lip Liner Stay-N persuaded Ulta to bring it in stores. Gloss Ventures VP of operations Lucinda Holland says, “It was purely about proving the virality and the demand for the product that we’ve been experiencing across all of our distribution channels, particularly on TikTok Shop and Amazon.”
The success of Lip Liner Stay-N on TikTok Shop has created a halo effect, lifting Sacheu’s business in other points of distribution, particularly Amazon.“When we go out of stock on TikTok Shop, we usually see a slight drop in sales on Amazon,” says Holland. “Then, when it is back in stock, we see that spillover on Amazon as well.”
In June 2022, a video showing Cheung using Maybelline’s Tattoo Brow Easy Peel Off Tint as a lip liner went viral on TikTok. The video has been viewed 2 million times and shared over 4,000 times, and it sparked the idea for Lip Liner Stay-N. Up until then, Sacheu only had skincare and skincare tools in its assortment. Holland recounts, “It kind of got us thinking, ‘Oh, there’s a demand here for a product like this,’ so we started R&D for developing something that would be safe to use around the lips.”
Lip Liner Stay-N quickly gathered steam on TikTok in the first half of last year with people posting videos of applying and peeling off the stain to reveal tinted lips. “The product is very TikTok-able in terms of the whole user experience, from peeling the color off to seeing those instant results,” says Holland. “Compare that to say marketing a moisturizer where it takes a couple of weeks before you see the results.”
In July last year, TikTok invited Sacheu to join the beta launch of TikTok Shop, and the brand began working with creators in the platform’s affiliate program that rewards them for sharing and linking products in their videos and livestreams with commissions from brands. Creator commissions on TikTok Shop range widely from 2% to 80%. Sacheu also turned to creator platform Bounty to boost awareness of Lip Liner Stay-N on social media.
TikTok Shop is Sacheu’s largest distribution channel, accounting for approximately 35% of its sales. The majority of the brand’s revenues from TikTok are generated from affiliate sales, and it allocates approximately 18% of its marketing budget toward commissions, advertising and content generation on the platform. Amazon and Ulta are Sacheu’s second- and third-largest sales distribution avenues by volume. Fueled by its robust performance on TikTok Shop, Sacheu’s sales increased more than 200% in 2023 and are on track to grow over 250% this year.
Established in 2020 by Cheung and Gloss Ventures co-founders Quinn Roukema and Tobias Topel, Sacheu aims to identify trending products and level up their performance. Speaking of the brand’s initial product, Stainless Steel Gua Sha, Holland says, “The three co-founders wanted to come up with how to improve gua sha tools, and that’s where stainless steel came in. It’s more durable and more hygienic than jade.”
At Gloss Ventures, Sacheu has 10 team members dedicated to the brand. Cheung assists with branding, marketing and product development. Along with Sacheu, the beauty brands Glossmetics and Zoe Ayla are in Gloss Ventures’ portfolio. Gloss Ventures acquired supplement brand Vitamin Bounty and oral care brand Active Wow in 2021, but subsequently sold them to narrow its focus toskincare and makeup brands.
Last year, wholesale represented 36% of Gloss Ventures’ sales, Amazon represented 23% and direct-to-consumer distribution represented 41%. The company was founded to incubate and acquire health and beauty brands directed at gen Z and millennial consumers. It’s currently in the process of fundraising.
Sacheu will concentrate on color cosmetics in its forthcoming launches. It plans to extend Lip Liner Stay-N’s shade range and introduce complementary lip products. The brand is looking to leverage its patent-pending stain technology in the development of face products as well.
“Skincare is just so heavily saturated and competitive,” says Holland. “So, we are switching gears from being a skincare brand to more of a color cosmetic brand, and that’s down to the success we’ve had with our lip liner.”
