On June 6, Ipsy, the membership-based multi-brand beauty retailer launched in 2011, hosted its second-annual awards dubbed the Ipsies, meant to be a tool for IRL community building. The brand has generated over 200 million reviews, averaging 3.3 million monthly ratings on the products it sends out to its members. The awards program allows the company to highlight what its customers have loved the most. In addition, the awards honor brands and creators.
Brand and product award winners are based on a combination of the Ipsy community’s ratings and survey feedback. “We generate more ratings than Yelp on the products we offer,” said Karen Chimal, Ipsy’s director of creator partnerships.
The creator categories, however, are chosen by the Ipsy community. Three awards were given to creators: the Trendsetter, for a creator who is early to or sets trends; the Content Powerhouse, for someone super-active in posting content; and the Community Activator award, for a creator with the most engaged fans.
Each award had two honorees, with the subcategories based on the creators’ followings. “Mega” winners had over a million followers, while “Emerging” winners had not yet reached that benchmark.
In addition, Ipsy creator Lindcey Nava (@lindceybeauty; 134,000 Instagram followers) won the sole “One To Watch” award, based on votes from the Ipsy community. For this category, creators were nominated exclusively from Ipsy’s incubator program based on their follower and engagement growth.
To be eligible for the awards, creators must be active in Ipsy’s community, either via a paid partnership or membership in the brand’s incubator program. Members of the incubator program, which has 3,000 members, receive Ipsy product shipments every month and are required to post about them once per quarter. Incubator program members are often tapped to be featured in larger-scale Ipsy campaigns. In addition, Ipsy hosts an Accelerator program for 50 creators, who receive monthly stipends to shop Ipsy and three content creation briefs, from which they can choose what to create.
“Creators’ content briefs may come from our growth team, when it’s trying to test something out for an ad, or from our social team, when there’s a type of content they’re focusing on, like ‘soft girl makeup.’ Or maybe it’s from one of our brand partners that is launching a new product and is [seeking] reviews,” Chimal said, In June, Ipsy worked with Glow Recipe to seed its Pomegranate Peptide Firming Serum to its creators who committed to testing it for four weeks before giving reviews.
Ipsy flew the two finalists from each awards category to New York City for the awards, which were held at the Chelsea Factory theater.
“You have a 50/50 shot of winning, plus you get a fun trip and you get to meet people,” Chimal said, regarding the draw. In addition to the awards ceremony, the five-hour event included panel discussions featuring influencers including Remi Bader and Haley Kalil (@haleyybaylee), and executives including Elyse Cohen, Rare Beauty’s evp of social impact and inclusion, and Laurie Lam, E.l.f. Beauty’s chief brand officer.
A Times Square billboard featuring the Ipsies winners went up the day following the awards. Ipsy took the creators on a tour bus, complete with Statue of Liberty hats and pizza, to see the billboard while they were in town. The last time the brand did OOH advertising was in 2018, when it unveiled a rebranding, Chimal said.
In 2020, Ipsy acquired BoxyCharm for $500 million. At that time, it was reported that the two companies combined had over 4.3 million subscribers and had generated $1 billion in revenue that year. As of 2022, Ipsy had raised over $230 million in total funding. Company executives declined to comment on its 2024 revenue.
