The Glossy 50 celebrates individual changemakers. They include executives who took their companies into new, competitive categories, industry newcomers who disrupted age-old processes, dealmakers who led groundbreaking partnerships and creatives whose work managed to cut through the noise. More from the series →
The Accelerators: These drivers of a growth-fueling change made a big impact in-house.
Live Tinted received $10 million in Series A funding in March and expanded into Sephora Canada in July. Prior to its launch in Sephora Canada, it was available for purchase in Ulta Beauty and Target. But Deepica Mutyala, founder and CEO, said this is only the beginning for the brand.
Before introducing products in January 2018, Live Tinted started as an online community for women of color to celebrate the diversity of beauty across the globe. According to Mutyala, since the brand’s launch, it has consistently doubled its sales year-over-year.
“There are ways to hack growth that we’re not [leveraging],” said Mutyala. “Growth takes time, and I want to do this in a healthy way. I want the business to be profitable.”
This year, Live Tinted’s growth has been centered on expanding to new retail channels and building the solid team needed to tackle scaling goals. That’s included hiring a chief commercial officer, Amanda Domaleczny, and a vp of marketing, María Llanos. Mutyala is now looking forward to building on the brand’s momentum and growing its community.
What are your plans for Live Tinted’s newer funding?
“We need to hire more people — everyone from executives to people who are strong executors to support our retail expansion. Ulta Beauty has been an amazing exclusive partner in the U.S. They are so deeply behind the brand and want to be brand builders to help us evolve. But at the end of the day, going into retail is no small feat, and it requires resources. It requires dollars, and it requires a team. Everything that we have modeled out and planned is to help expand those doors because, the way I see it, if we want to … serve as an example for the beauty industry of what you can do, we have to be in as many doors as possible to spread that mission. Ulta has 1,400 doors, and we’re working with them to get to a place where we can be in all doors, and that requires resources.”
Why did you choose to partner with Sephora Canada for this retail expansion?
“We looked at our data, and the percentage of audience we had in Canada was substantial, so it was a no-brainer for us to launch there at some point. It was also important to me that we did it with the right partner that was going to get behind us and do it in a meaningful way. … I never want our community to feel like we did something without our whole heart and soul in it. Sephora Canada put us in the window during our launch week, and it was surreal.”
What are you most excited about this upcoming year as you continue to build out the team?
“We just started our journey into complexion [products] with our concealers, which the community has been asking for since we launched our Huesticks in 2019. … I want to make this concealer one of the best and biggest in the industry, and to expand our complexion [category]. As our brand stands for diversity and inclusivity, it’s important to the community that we have complexion products that are made by us, for us. Over the next 12 months, you’ll see us continue to grow and expand our complexion category, and I know that’s going to mean a lot to the community.”
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