Maureen Kelly famously launched Tarte from her one-bedroom apartment in 1999. Twenty-six years later, she’s debuting a second brand, Finnsul, with her two sons, Finn and Sully McDonough — the brand name is an amalgam of their names. The founders have bootstrapped the brand from Kelly’s renovated garage. Finn is 18 and will be heading to college soon; Sully is 19 and a freshman at the University of Miami.
Finnsul takes Kelly into wellness, unlike many of her peers, who have stayed within beauty for their second ventures — think Bobbi Brown with her eponymous brand and then Jones Road, Wende Zomnir with Urban Decay and then Caliray, and Jeanine Lobell with Stila and then Neen.
The product aims to blend electrolytes and nootropics, “because no one is doing hydration for your brain,” Kelly said. She and both of her sons have ADD and constantly operate as though “37 tabs are open at once,” she said. Before working on Finnsul, they were combining supplements themselves. The brand emerged from a desire to streamline the process.
“It was working, and it was definitely helping, but eventually we decided: ‘You know what? Let’s put [these supplements] together. It’s not manageable to do it the way we were doing it,” Kelly said.
Finnsul’s key ingredients include electrolytes, vitamin B and biotin, the latter of which promotes healthy hair and nails and ties to Kelly’s beauty background. The nootropic support comes from Cognizin, a patented form of citicoline, which is said to increase mental energy, focus, attention and memory. Finnsul is a powder sold in packets and available in caffeinated and non-caffeinated versions. Kelly said she starts her day with a caffeinated pack before moving to the non-caffeinated versions. It is available in three flavors: strawberry, lemonade and passionfruit. Packets are sugar-free and contain five calories each. Bags of 15 packets cost $29.99, while bags of loose powder cost $49.99.
It’s a good time to launch a product featuring Finnsul’s key ingredients. According to Spate’s Popularity Index, which measures popularity across Google Searches, TikTok views, and Instagram posts, electrolytes surged more than 51% year over year in the U.S. for the year ending February 2026. They are currently considered “very high” in popularity, according to the trend forecasting company. Biotin is also in the “very high” popularity category, with 6.5% year-over-year growth, while vitamin B and nootropics are seeing “high” popularity, with growth of 21.5% and 12.4%, respectively.
The brand launched on its e-commerce site and TikTok Shop on Tuesday. It has largely focused on community building for brand awareness and has tapped its community to weigh in on decisions like what flavors to launch and what color merch to create.
This strategy, Kelly said, is “very powerful, because it lets us have real conversations with our community and learn what people want next and how they’re actually using [Finnsul] in their everyday lives. That feedback loop is so valuable. When we eventually go into retail, we want to show up in a way that feels really different — more experiential, more educational and more community-driven.”
“Maureen and the boys have basically been crowdsourcing everything, and now, we’re going to take that to the TikTok community, as well,” said Erica Sieni, vp of brand marketing at Tarte, who is also working on Finnsul. “That includes the color of the merch for the sweatshirts, the designs of the water bottles, the colors of the caps, the colors of the logos and the flavors. We’re really going to lean into that community [when it comes to] what we’re going to launch next.”
Already, Finnsul has 14,000 Instagram followers and 25,000 TikTok followers. Its waitlist had 50,000 signups the day before launch, the brand shared. It is using these accounts to build community and include that community in decisions. Undoubtedly, the brand has also received a boost from Kelly’s own 554,00 TikTok followers and 266,000 Instagram followers; over the past year, she has posted on her accounts about the process of working on the brand with her sons.
“We’ve had some big retailers reach out to us already, and we kindly said, ‘Thank you so much, and we would love to revisit that at some point down the road, but we are not there yet,'” Kelly said.
That said, in April, the brand will unofficially debut across Ulta’s full chain when single Finnsul packets are included in special Tarte x Finnsul product kits. They will feature each flavor paired with a different Tarte product, including the bestselling Tartelette Tubing Mascara and Maracuja Juicy Lips lip gloss. Finnsul has also benefited from Tarte’s robust influencer marketing, using its “Trippin’ With Tarte” trips to preview products with creators.
Finnsul has begun seeding to BookTok influencers because, as Kelly noted, reading requires focus. It is also gifting to creators she described as “corporate baddies.” In addition, it is hosting “Finnsul for Finals” bars — a scrappy tactic that introduces college students to the brand for free. It will start on Sully’s own University of Miami campus and also activate at the University of Georgia. It will then look to its community to determine where to show up next. Finnsul will also be delivering kegs of Finnsul — alcohol-free, of course — to creators.
Kelly declined to share how much she has invested in Finnsul, emphasizing that the brand has been bootstrapped and that her sons will fulfill orders themselves from her garage.
“Finnsul is being built the old-school way — bootstrapped, scrappy and hands-on. Finn built the entire TikTok Shop and website himself and will answer customer service questions, while Sully has grown the waitlist and helped hand-select every ingredient between finals and factory visits. The boys have put in their own savings earned through jobs and investments, and continue to reinvest everything back into the business. Maureen supported the initial stick pack launch, but this is very much a next-gen founder story powered by their own hustle,” a brand representative shared.
According to the CDC, some 15.5 million U.S. adults, or 6%, have ADHD. Of course, ADHD isn’t a prerequisite to use Finnsul — Kelly said, noting that the product can benefit a broader audience, as many people feel cognitively overwhelmed today. “We’re not positioning this as a fixing-anything [product]. It’s about helping you feel clearer and more steady and more in control of your focus. Whether you have ADHD or not, we’re all getting the Slacks, the emails, the texts — like, it never stops.”
