Pop-ups can be a bit of a circus, designed by brands to garner earned media value and brag-worthy stats about just how long fans waited in line to take pictures with life-sized products, for example.
Merit’s first U.S. pop-up, however, is not meant to bait aspiring or actual influencers, according to Aila Morin, its CMO.
The pop-up will take place in NYC’s Soho neighborhood from May 30 to June 1 and will mark the arrival of Merit’s latest product, the Uniform Tinted Mineral Sunscreen SPF 45, which comes in 15 shades and retails for $38. The product has, in some form or another, been in development since before the brand first launched in 2021.
It is Merit’s second complexion product. Its first, the Minimalist Perfecting Complexion Foundation and Concealer Stick, was the No. 1 stick foundation at Sephora throughout 2024 and has continued to hold that ranking, a Merit brand rep confirmed. It’s also within Sephora’s top five for all foundation formulas, Morin said. “[It] has been a phenomenal win for us, in terms of complexion, and it’s very unexpected to have a stick foundation rank three or four in total.”
Morin does not expect that Merit’s target customer will be willing to wait in line, so the pop-up was planned to avoid just that. “Our customer is primarily in her 30s and 40s,” she said.
The focus of the three-day event is shade-matching. “What shade am I?” is the question the brand most frequently receives in its DMs and emails, Morin said.
She added, “We build pop-ups to interact with our community, and so they can shop. I don’t think that’s why most people do it anymore.” Morin said. Sephora-co-hosted pop-ups, for example, often do not sell products on site. Merit is producing this pop-up completely independently of its retailer, however.
And though customers will be able to buy Merit’s new product on site, sales are not the primary KPI for the pop-up, Morin said. “[The goal is] much more about building a community, hearing feedback, and [allowing] people to feel like they can ask questions and try things.”
“We are seeing this as a test because we haven’t done something like this in New York before,” said Vanessa Krooss, Merit’s senior director of brand. Krooss noted that when the brand executed a pop-up to mark its arrival in Sephora U.K., in April, a lot of attendees were multi-generational: “The mother [would be] a Merit die-hard, and she’d given a Shade Slick [the brand’s lip oil] to her daughter —those were the people who were queuing up and making an afternoon of it in Central London,” she said, noting that it was not the customers seen on TikTok using pop-ups as content creation studios.
As for the new pop-up, it was inspired by dry cleaners and the concept of a uniform. To that end, the brand is collaborating with Brooks Brothers to sell a button-down shirt embellished with both brands’ logos on the chest and the phrase “DO LESS” on one sleeve. The shirt will be $125, plus an additional $15 should customers choose to add custom monograms, and only “around 500” were made, a rep for the brand shared. Morin said the concept for the pop-up found its origins in the process of naming the product, finally called the Uniform Tinted Mineral Sunscreen SPF 45.
She recalled the seamless nature of her father getting dressed in the morning and taking freshly-pressed shirts out of dry-cleaner wrapping. “He would put on the same thing every single morning. I remember as a kid seeing how orderly it was,” she said.
When the makeup brand eventually got in touch with Brooks Brothers, the 207-year-old clothing brand communicated that 2025 is the 125-year anniversary of “the button-up shirt,” which Brooks Brothers invented, Morin said. The partnership felt “full circle,” as Merit has often shot models wearing vintage Brooks Brothers shirting, she added.
“Uniforms tend to exist primarily for men, and they make for an easy way to get ready. You don’t have to think about it,” Morin said. The Uniform SPF is meant to provide women with the same, at least when it comes to a tint and sun protection.
Morin is aware that “everybody has an SPF” and acknowledged that the brand has not reinvented the wheel. But, she said, the devil is in the details. “Every tiny, itty bitty detail is perfect [with this product]. It’s perfect, and that’s what makes it great.” She pointed to factors like its 100% mineral formula, its high SPF protection, its inclusive shade range and its comfortable formula.
Though the brand declined to share a specific sales projection, a rep said it can be expected that The Uniform will become a “core franchise” for the brand.
