In February, the beauty aisle wasn’t exactly lacking for bronzing drops. The format had already made its way across the price spectrum, from Drunk Elephant’s and Summer Fridays’s high-end versions to E.l.f. Cosmetics’s mass-market take on the formula. But Gucci Westman still felt she had something to add to the category.
“I have actually not used a product that has been on par with this. And I’m not just saying it because it’s ours. I would honestly say that if it were another brand,” said Westman, the makeup artist and founder of Westman Atelier, of her namesake brand’s foray into bronzing drops. “This is the most authentic product, so far, to me, as a brand founder, as a makeup artist. It’s just in keeping with the philosophy of how I do skin. People talk about complexion all the time, in regard to foundation. But I think it’s so much more.”
Westman Atelier launched four shades of its Sun Tone Bronzing Drops in February. The $58 product became the brand’s first launch to make it to a front-of-store display at Sephora and earned TikTok approval from the likes of makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes. Within a month, the product had sold out.
While selling out makes good headlines, it also means leaving sales on the table. But since bringing its Bronzing Drops back in stock in July, Westman Atelier is making use of the summer to put renewed focus on the launch.
“Obviously, it is disappointing [to sell out], but then it’s also really exciting for us as a brand, because we know that it’s really resonating with the community. And we saw a lot of new customers coming in on this product, which is always really exciting for us,” said Westman Atelier CMO Kate Weizman. “Our retailers are obviously very excited about [the relaunch], and I think it also gave us an opportunity to reanimate on a product that we didn’t feel like got its time in the sun because of how strong it was at launch.”
The brand will roll out a series of activations throughout the end of summer, beginning with a pop-up on Saturday at East Hampton’s A La Mode Shoppe ice cream parlor. Westman and Weizman anticipate thousands of visitors will pass through the pop-up, which will begin with an exclusive media and influencer hour before opening to the public in the afternoon.
Westman Atelier will also use the Bronzing Drops restock to visit beauty retailers that have received their own refresh in recent months. The Hamptons pop-up will be followed by a visit to Space NK in London on August 23 and to Nordstrom’s New York City location in September, when the department store will unveil a revamped beauty floor.
While Westman and Weizman declined to share sales projections for the Bronzing Drops relaunch, they said the product incurred a 15,000-person waitlist leading up to the restock and anticipate it will become a top 10 product for the brand by the end of the year. But exactly how many Bronzing Drops they will need to produce to meet demand is still something they will learn along the way.
“We’re always learning how high is high, but it’s a little bit of intuition — How is Gucci feeling? — plus a little bit of historical benchmarking, a lot of partnership with our retailers, and then a little bit of safety stock,” said Weizman.
