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 →
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About four years ago, Glossy profiled Muneeb Shah. At the time, he was a resident who had accumulated an impressive 6 million TikTok followers. He had started posting during quarantine. Now, that number has skyrocketed to 17.9 million — plus an additional 1.1 million followers on Instagram. Recent content reveals partnerships with brands including Timeless Skin Care, No. 7 Skin Care and TirTir, to name a few.
Last March, Dr. Shah debuted Remedy, his own brand, which currently offers three serums, a lip balm, a moisturizer, a dandruff shampoo, a body cream for keratosis pilaris and pimple patches. In addition, Dr. Shah serves — along with Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali — as one of Neutrogena’s two Global Innovation Partners. The multi-year contract saw him co-star alongside Tate McRae in Neutrogena’s recent TV commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl.
In this week’s Glossy Beauty Podcast episode, Sara Spruch-Feiner speaks with Dr. Shah about his TikTok growth and the content that resonates with his following, the trials and tribulations of his first year running a brand, and the work he’s doing with Neutrogena.
But first, co-hosts Sara Spruch-Feiner and Lexy Lebsack chat about Ulta’s consumer-facing Ulta Beauty World event in San Antonio, the retailer’s partnership with Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour, and the recent layoffs at Coty and UPS.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
Educational, value-driven content
“I think the principles [that grew my following] were the same as [those that earned me] the first six million [followers]. I try to provide value in all of my content. So, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, the principles are still the same. If people find your content valuable and it reaches a lot of people, they’ll follow you. It’s really just leading with value for people, either debunking misinformation, providing them with actionable items regarding their skin or just entertaining them in some way. So, I think it was that — plus the TikTok algorithm was very beneficial at the time I joined. So I had a little bit of a first-starter advantage, for sure.”
Launching Remedy with the benefit of a platform
“When it came to a brand, that would be, as a dermatology resident, a pie in the sky dream. Prior to social media, it would have been unachievable for me, but it would have always been a dream to be able to create a skin-care product [with] the resources to develop really innovative formulas. … By having a platform, you’re able to decrease the most expensive part of the business, which is your customer acquisition costs. So it became clear that the pie-in-the-sky dream could become possible. After working with so many other brands and also promoting brands organically, I didn’t want to launch a brand if it was just going to create more noise in the space. There are enough very basic products out there that I’ve already recommended to people. I wanted to create really innovative formulas — and the platform and the reach and the audience [I have now] gave me the ability to pursue that dream of creating these very highly active, all-in-one treatments that have never been created before.”
Working with Neutrogena
“Neutrogena went through this period where they didn’t really engage well with the derm community. And we saw some pretty scathing articles that came out [over the last couple years], saying, basically, they missed this huge beauty boom and the opportunity to lean into [DermTok]. And this is a brand that’s truly been a derm brand from the very beginning. And they approached us, [saying], ‘We really need to think about innovation and engaging with the derm community.’ And to me, this was one of those opportunities that was too enticing to turn down. … I’ve never seen a partnership like this, and I truly mean that because I’ve worked with so many different brands. I’ve consulted with brands on product development, and they’re usually special projects — we’re working on one product or maybe two products as part of a lineup. But this has buy-in from the very top of Neutrogena. We have consulting calls with them, talking about their innovation pipeline over the next five years, which categories they want to go after and which ingredient stories are important to our patients. [We ask,] ‘How can we be designing our clinical studies that are relevant to dermatologists?’ For example, we helped them design a study about their Hydro Boost product and how it can be used post-procedurally for someone getting a laser, which is very relevant to dermatologists, because we see a lot of laser patients. … I actually think it’s beneficial in some ways to Remedy, too. To be a good leader of a brand, you need to think about not where you are today, but where you could be.”
