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After a wide range of beauty collaborations under her belt from her 12 years as a beauty influencer, Desi Perkins finally took the plunge and became a beauty founder herself a year ago.
Launched in April 2021, her skin-care brand, Dezi Skin, now has four products, with names such as “Claro Que C” and ingredients inspired by her Mexican heritage.
With over 3 million YouTube subscribers and 4.3 million Instagram followers, Perkins is focused on Instagram for her brand’s marketing but is eyeing TikTok, too.
“[Instagram] is targeting its platform toward brands and a shopping experience. For brands, this is still a really, really great platform. But I would also like to dip into TikTok with the brand, in a more casual sense. That’s definitely in our forecast,” she said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast.
Check out the entire podcast episode to learn about Perkins’ development process for her brand and the way she uses audience feedback to develop products. She also shares her views on the beauty social media landscape and how it’s changed over the past decade.
On why she chose skin care:
“I knew I wanted to do skin care when everybody was pushing me to do makeup. At the time, I said, ‘I really want to start my own brand,’ and people really associated me heavily with makeup. But skin care just gives me more satisfaction. I love both — don’t get me wrong, I love makeup. But I realized that I had the passion for helping people with their skin more than even the makeup.”
On product development:
“My first product was definitely something that I created for myself and for my specific audience that has been with me this whole time. It was something that I definitely targeted toward them, because those are the people that have been with me and talking to me about their skin issues. I’m Mexican, and I know a lot of Latinas follow me, and they talk to me about hyperpigmentation and dark spots. Anyone with more melanin in their skin tone tends to get more dark spots.”
On the new beauty consumer:
“The consumer is so educated and they do a lot of research. That’s opposed to years ago, when what was in your product maybe wasn’t as important. But I knew — especially as an influencer coming in and doing a skin-care brand — that I wanted to be taken seriously. What ingredients were in my products were so important, because I didn’t want it to feel like I was just putting out a ‘whatever’ product. That’s [an idea] that gets thrown around.”
