This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
For MCoBeauty CMO Meridith Rojas, the ability to democratize the beauty industry lies in the power of dupes.
“We’re in this moment, in this cultural zeitgeist, where people don’t want to have to spend $1,000 on a face of beauty and don’t want to be left out of the trends,” said Rojas. “We really want to create luxury for everyone. And of course, we have amazing dupes, but we also have some homegrown innovation. The combination has been really magnetic, and our community is growing in the U.S. so fast. We have a very exciting year ahead of us.”
Dupes, the colloquial term for a lower-priced product inspired by a luxury category leader, makes up about half of MCo’s offering. Unlike counterfeits or copies, which are often associated with unsafe formulas and flagrant IP violations, dupes are in their own category and are incredibly popular globally.
MCoBeauty sells recognizable dupes for popular products from brands like Charlotte Tilbury, Drunk Elephant, Sol de Janeiro and Laneige for around a third of the price. For example, MCoBeauty’s best-selling Flawless Glow Foundation retails for $14.99, and its Miracle Flawless Pressed Powder goes for $9.99. Similar products from Charlotte Tilbury retail for $49 and $28, respectively.
It also offers non-dupes, like its best-selling XtendLash tubing mascara, which sells for $13.99.
MCoBeauty was launched in Australia in 2016 by founder Shelley Sullivan, a former modeling agency owner. It is currently the top-selling color cosmetics brand in Australia and New Zealand, according to Greg Barker, MCoBeauty’s evp of North America.
As previously reported by Glossy in December, MCoBeauty launched its U.S. expansion at the end of 2024 with entry into 1,700 Kroger stores, which include regional grocery stores like Smiths, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Frys, Ralphs and more. The expansion also includes DTC sales via MCoBeauty’s site and Amazon. This week, MCoBeauty also launched into 1,300 Target doors and on Target.com.
“The reception [in the U.S.] has been better than we could have hoped for,” Rojas told Glossy. “It just continues to validate our thesis that affordable, accessible luxury is something consumers want.”
MCoBeauty is privately held by Australian health and wellness conglomerate DBG Health within its personal care division, VidaCorp.
As reported by Forbes earlier this month, founder Sullivan stepped down as CEO this year after selling the business at a valuation “north of $1 billion” to DBG Health’s Dennis Bastas.
With its U.S. expansion, MCoBeauty is primed to provide competition for other mass beauty brands that rely heavily on value pricing or dupe formulas, like E.l.f. Beauty, Nyx and Colourpop. It’s also well-timed to compete with German conglomerate Cosnova, which surpassed $1 billion dollars in sales in 2024 during its U.S. expansion of brands Essence and Catrice.
“Some people will go, ‘Oh, well, dupes are not original.’ But actually, accessibility is a form of innovation,” Rojas said. “You should feel elegant and stylish and confident, first and foremost. And none of that should be about the amount of money in your wallet.”
Similarly to its U.S. competition, all MCoBeauty products retail for under $15. But unlike its competition, MCoBeauty is also inspired by luxury packaging. The brand uses glass packaging instead of plastic for some products and features tech-y upgrades, like a tiny LED light and mirror attached to its bestselling Liplights Shine Lip Gloss, which sells for $8.49. Competition in the mass dupe space mainly uses minimal plastic packaging to reduce shipping costs and maximize shelf space in retail.
Rojas joined MCoBeauty in 2024. Her CV includes marketing roles at Logitech, Columbia Records and Captiv8. She also founded a live event production group focused on social media talent called DigiTour Media and wrote a book for digital marketers in 2019 called “Selfie Made: Your Ultimate Guide to Social Media Stardom,” published by Macmillan.
Rojas joined The Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss MCoBeauty’s U.S. expansion and the marketing strategy supporting it. She shared anecdotes about the company’s OOH and digital marketing successes, including advice on building a digital community, connecting with influencers early in their careers, getting the best community UGC and hiring digitally-minded celebrities to lead social-first campaigns. Excerpts from the conversation, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
On growing a U.S. audience
“We’re starting to see this evolution of community marketing, where you can even see some of the other brands out there that are doing influencer PR trips getting scrutinized. There’s a lot of negativity — these [big influencers] don’t need more stuff, and so where that’s dovetailing into is, ‘How do you empower the community? How do you … start to create a community of people, even if they have 100 followers, who are evangelists for the brand?’ It’s not to say that we don’t gift PR [to influencers], but [successful digital marketing] is starting to go in a different direction, toward the community. And it’s about saying, ‘Can you activate that community [to do something]?’ Because that’s marketing brand building today. That’s the difference between a brand that’s going to win versus a brand that is relying on the old methods of foot traffic, traditional advertising or influencer marketing like it was done 10 years ago.”
On procuring successful UGC
“If you can provide prompts to the people who already love you, or you can find ways to build architecture around people who are already talking about you as a brand, then you’re fueling the flames of the fire, right? There are lots of great social listening tools, some of which we use, and then being able to kind of say, ‘OK, I want to find the people’ — and sometimes I even do this manually. I’ve been a total nut recently because of the Target launch. I’m just like, ‘Who is organically discovering this?’ Because I want to understand the sentiment. I want to know what they’re saying. I want to know what their experience was like seeing [the products] in the store, what they chose to buy, how they liked the experience of trying it. … Half the time for creators, they’re creating it, and the content might look great, but it’s hard to get that momentum. And [it makes a difference] if the brand can take the time to reach out to them and be like, ‘That was amazing,’ or to comment or to recommend they join an ambassador program or an affiliate network. That’s the difference of them being like, ‘OK, this isn’t worth it,’ or ‘This is worth it’. So giving them a gust of wind also pays back dividends to the brand, because then that’s an evangelist for life, or for a good period of time. And that’s who you should send your mailers to, right?”
