Turns out, we may need MORE beauty brands

When I launched hi-BB in 2024, it was based on the thesis that the world does not need another beauty brand. I did so much research, and the resounding feedback was that shopping for beauty online or in-store was overwhelming. I would hear the same thing: “I have no idea what actually works for me.” So I built a tool to help the confused find the right thing among everything out there. When people tried what we built, they loved it. We made thousands of matches. The hook was rational, logical, and it worked. But the numbers weren’t compounding the way I expected, and my inner voice was saying something was askew, so I started questioning the original thesis. After testing, we learned that older consumers gravitated to the tool more than younger consumers. Focus groups revealed that we nailed the rational side (“What is best for me?”), but we lacked the emotional part.

Did I build something that was too rational in an emotional industry?

I went out on the streets to ask people, and they said yes, followed by, “If it’s new, I would be interested.” New is exciting…and I can understand that, but that word has superpowers in beauty. Was I looking at the industry through the lens of supply and saturation, while consumers were living inside the psychology of what’s next? Younger consumers, in particular, are not fatigued by choice in the same way my generation is. They want to be cool, included in a community, and love the thrill of discovering something before their group chat does.

As I continued with this line of contrarian thinking, I wondered how can technology solve the problem of minimum order quantities, which is THE bottleneck. As someone who had a front row seat in developing beauty brands, what if everything I knew about the making of the brands suddenly accelerated?

Openclaw, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Nano Banana, and Lovable are some of the hottest new tools right now. They are creating step-function speed and innovation in technology. If anyone can now code, and you can simply talk to all of your files on your computer to get stuff done, why aren’t you doing it?

Do you remember when Uber was $5 a ride…and today that same ride is $50? That’s because venture capital was subsidizing it until we were all hooked. The same will be true of AI. It’s pretty much free right now, but there will be a time in the future when it won’t be.

I do not believe we are heading toward a fully automated, soulless future. I suspect we will land somewhere in the middle. The technology will lower barriers and compress timelines, and the 2,500 or so beauty brands operating today in the United States will skyrocket. I predict that the experience of launching a beauty brand will change from concept to consumer, and it will further democratize personal branding for everyone interested. If your dream is to start a new beauty brand, I support you. I have learned that more is more: new is new. The speed of what will launch will only grow, audiences will fragment, and real money can be made. Once someone figures out how minimum order quantities can approach one, everyone who wants a beauty brand can and will have one.

In the future, when high MOQs are the thing of the past, I will be launching my Lock It to Rock It Cream. It will be packed with occlusive ingredients, with a hint of pearl that makes your skin glow. It will be super, super, super thick and made only for dry skin girlies.

The packaging will come in a tin with a minimal design, and it will be affordable because you will want to lay it on thick without breaking the bank. The hero ingredient will be chickpea flour, which my mother taught me to use as a mask to brighten my skin when I was a little girl. It will not be marketed as “clean,” because that meaningless word makes me cringe. It will just work.

Maybe we do need more beauty brands after all.