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Brooklyn and Bailey McKnight, the 23-year-old identical twins and co-founders of ITK Skin, got their start on YouTube in 2013, where they now have over 7 million subscribers. They also have 9.3 million followers on Instagram and 6.6 million on TikTok. Together, in partnership with the beauty incubator Maesa, the sisters launched ITK in August 2022. The brand started at Walmart, with 15 products priced at $7-$15.
But, by the time they launched ITK, the McKnight sisters were already veteran founders, having launched their first business venture, clothing and mascara brand Lash Next Door, when they were just 16.
On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Brooklyn and Bailey McKnight discuss how they got their start on their mom’s YouTube channel, why Brooklyn got her esthetician’s license, why they think TikTok Shop will level the playing field for brands and what it was like to pitch their brand to Walmart.
The excerpts below have been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.
On pitching Walmart
Bailey McKnight: “It’s intimidating. No one talks about [pitching a retailer]. … Even though Brooklyn and I had done product development, and we went to school and got a Bachelor’s in business, there’s so much you don’t know. So where do you start? How does that work? Who do you partner with? Who do you talk to? I think it was extremely helpful that we had a mentor in my mom who had, of course, a couple of years earlier, done exactly what we followed in her footsteps to do. … We did not know exactly how to go about finding a partner. But what we did know is it would require a lot of hands and a lot of financing. And that was something Brooklyn and I could not do on our own. So we needed a partner. And my mom had found a really good partnership with Maesa, for Hairitage, so we knew that they had ties to big retailers like Walmart. And not only that, but also it was a small enough company that we could do innovative things with our brand, which is what we wanted to do.”
On their surprise bestselling product
Brooklyn McKnight: “It was a different [product] than we thought it was going to be, but we’re not mad about it. We really thought cleansers and moisturizers were going to be our hard-hitting [best-sellers,] and they are. But we just had a product take off, and it’s called the Blemish Treatment Mist, and it has gone viral on TikTok many times. It is, like, my hero product. I live and die by this product. I am an acne-prone girly. It’s a mist, and it has a little bit of salicylic acid, some licorice root. … It’s just an amazing product. You just spray it on after you wash your face, and it helps prevent acne. And we get DMs [from] people who have used it for a week and are seeing significant changes in their skin. … People are just loving it. And by default, of course, then they’re talking about it. And it’s going viral on places like TikTok. And, we’re seeing sales because of that. So that’s risen to be our No. 1 product for ITK right now.”
On defining the brand’s point of difference
Bailey McKnight: “We talked a lot about how skin care is super intimidating — how you walk down the aisle, and a lot of it looks almost medicinal; it looks very intimidating to someone younger — Gen Z, Gen Alpha. I was the 12-year-old who was walking down the aisle and looking at some of [these products], being like, ‘What is a BHA?’, ‘What’s hyaluronic acid?’ I had no idea. So, we talked about making skin care more simple and less intimidating, packaging-wise. We wanted it to be something that could sit on your bathroom shelf and still look pretty, but it’s gonna work. So we put all of these things hand in hand with affordability and efficacy. … The cool girl’s going to have it sitting on her bathroom shelf, … [but also] you’re not confused by the verbiage or how you’re supposed to use it.”
