Just two years after the brand entered the category in 2022, Trinny London’s skin care assortment comprises 42 percent of the 2017-founded beauty brand’s overall business.
“The retention is incredibly high, and consumers are buying into the entire routine, which is exciting,” said founder and TV personality Trinny Woodall in a conversation with Summer Fridays cofounder Marianna Hewitt moderated by WWD’s senior beauty editor Kathryn Hopkins.
This retention has been made possible in large part due to the brand’s data-informed approach to storytelling, Woodall said.
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“We don’t just try and sell you product, we try to engage you as a woman and think about what’s worrying you right now, how you’re feeling,” she continued, adding that roughly 1 million customers have completed the brand’s Match2Me skin care and makeup preference questionnaire, with Trinny London netting roughly 200 data points per survey taker.
Though the brand — which is in the process of opening a U.K. flagship — doesn’t sell on platforms like TikTok Shop, QVC or Amazon Live, Woodall argued that “everything we do is actually social selling, because of the way we have conversations with our audience.”
It’s a sentiment that also rings true for Hewitt, who introduced Summer Fridays with cofounder Lauren Ireland in 2018 as one of beauty’s earliest influencer-led brands.
“We always say we want to create products that work, and part of that is community engagement around product development,” said Hewitt, who — case in point — spun a new franchise out of the brand’s hero Jet Lag Mask offering in March with the induction of a Jet Lag Undereye Serum.
The brand has also been steadily rolling out additional iterations of its Lip Butter Balm, most recently adding a Birthday Cake flavor in February; the next will land in June.
“By allowing our community to be a part of our product development, they feel like they have a sense of ownership when the products come out, and that they’re asking for products which we’re actually creating,” Hewitt said.
The brand, which ranks as the number-one skin care brand by earned media value per CreatorIQ, is also strategic about how it leverages different social platforms. “Instagram is very curated, it’s about sharing this visually strong brand world of Summer Fridays; TikTok is more about discoverability, education — it’s a little more fast-paced, so we can be a bit more fun and playful,” said Hewitt.
While Woodall looks to Meta for “two-way conversations,” her brand is increasingly experimenting with long-form video on YouTube via beauty tutorials, myth-busting and the founder’s signature how-tos and styling tips. “We have an eight-minute watch time on YouTube, and we also have a 35 percent U.S. audience — for us, its an interesting platform to think about how we can tell stories that women feel emotionally connected to, in order for them to then discover the brand.”
As Summer Fridays, which recently entered Sephora U.K. and is eyeing further expansion into Western Europe, grows its global presence, replicating the level of community engagement it has cultivated in the U.S. is high priority.
“Building localized teams wherever we grow is helpful because the communication is different, the community is different, social platforms are different — we can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach as we enter new places,” Hewitt said.