What Emerging Brands Can Learn from the Staying Power of Heritage Brands...and Why It Matters Now
This is the third and final post in a three-part series examining the current state of beauty — indie and legacy — through the lens of new data from Beauty Independent and NielsenIQ.
In the first post, Indie Beauty Is Outpacing the Majors, I broke down how indie brands are gaining momentum, growing 13.5% last year compared to 4.7% for conglomerates, and now accounting for $31.8B in U.S. sales — nearly 29% of the total beauty market.
The second post, How Distribution, Discovery, and Disruption Are Rewriting Big Beauty’s Playbook, asked how legacy brands can stay relevant as distribution channels, consumer discovery, and brand loyalty continue to shift.
Now, I’m turning the focus back to indie.
Because while the growth is real, so is the pressure. Competition is fierce — not just from conglomerates, but from other indies. Brand loyalty has dropped 20% in two years. And as NIQ’s Anna Mayo puts it, “It’s easier now to get trial... but harder to get them to repeat.”
In this piece, I share four long-game moves indie founders should consider before scaling gets messy — and draw lessons from how legacy brands have stayed in the game for decades.
📝 Read more on Substack: Indie Beauty, Meet the Long Game
