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Business of Fashion

How Maesa Creates and Scales Beauty Brands in a Saturated Market

In 2025, price-sensitive consumers are trying to stretch their money further. Over 60 percent of consumers in the US and UK say they are attempting to save money on discretionary goods 'often' or 'as much as possible,' according to The Business of Fashion (BoF) and McKinsey & Co.'s The State of Fashion 2025 report. However, the notion of 'value' can vary for different consumers. For some, it means buying at off-price retailers. For others, it can be connected to product efficacy, long-lasting properties or simply buying fewer, higher quality items. Meanwhile, the global beauty and personal care market still remains a key spend priority for customers. Globally, it is projected to generate a revenue of more than $677 billion in 2025, according to Euromonitor. Since its inception in 1997, beauty incubator Maesa has worked to provide greater value to end-consumers. It began by manufacturing private label beauty products for high street and specialty retailers, but now in its next phase of growth, Maesa is doubling down on the creation and expansion of its own brands. The company is also partnering with American retailers, including Target and Walmart, to scale its businesses. 'We have more than doubled the business in the last four years,' says Maesa chief financial officer Zaheer Ferguson. 'While our foundations are in private label solutions, our move into creating and accelerating our own brands — either by ourselves or in partnership with our founders — has taken off, and we oversee end-to-end development of the brand including product, marketing, packaging and distribution.' Maesa's CFO Zaheer Fergurson (Maesa) Kristin Ess, which introduced salon-quality haircare into the mass category in 2017, is one example. Today, more than 6,000 units of its 'The One' signature shampoo and conditioner are sold every hour. Maesa's other brands include: actor Ashley Tisdale's wellness brand Being Frenshe; Youtuber Mindy McKnight's haircare brand Hairitage; and fragrance brand Fine'ry, which launched in 2023 and became Target's fastest-growing fragrance brand. These cross-category investments are reflective of Maesa's strategic priority to react quickly to the demands of the market and tap into trending categories, acting as both an operator and incubator for brands. 'We work hand-in-hand with buyers at various retailers, which enables us to be strategic about what [these retailers] and their consumers are looking for,' said Ferguson. 'Our model means we can have targeted support to focus on what things look like in store and how we drive conversion.' Indeed, the launch of perfume brand Fine'ry aligns with increased consumer interest in the fragrance category. Seventy-three percent of Gen-Z and Millennial customers use three or more scents regularly, and 69 percent layer their fragrances, according to a 2024 Boston Consulting Group survey. Meanwhile the hashtag #perfumetok saw a 110 percent year-on-year growth on TikTok in 2024. 'We have an in-house team called Blue Sky, which uses customer insight and a lot of data to think boldly about the categories that will matter. Our size allows for us to react and move quickly, as do the general beauty and wellness objectives we have. There's no constraint on category,' added Ferguson. 'As an incubator, we run an 'always-on' innovation cycle. This gives us the flexibility to be quite reactive and do small runs quickly.' Maesa's CEO Piyush Jain (Maesa) Now, BoF hears from Maesa's chief executive Piyush Jain on how Maesa's business model has evolved to meet consumer and market needs — and the categories and innovations it believes will continue to drive growth in a saturated market. As customers place increasing emphasis on value, how does Maesa define and deliver this need? Value is a frequently misused term. Traditionally, the cheapest brands in the category would sell — or market — themselves as offering 'value for money' because that was the easiest way to communicate their position in the market. In beauty today, consumers are much more informed on what they want. As part of that value piece, they want effective products. At Maesa, our core strategy is democratising access and making prestige trends available at a more accessible price point. Without obvious innovation, technology, or expensive ingredients to justify a higher price point, customers are quick to notice that the pricing doesn't make sense, and seek better value. Take fragrance: great, effective products tend to be priced around $200 to $250, and finding similar quality at $50 price points is more challenging. We saw a gap to operate in this space, particularly as consumers pivoted to using fragrance as a mood enhancer. We work to demonstrate value to consumers by showing up in the categories that matter to them — at competitive price points. How does Maesa prioritise which categories and brands to develop? Our desire to fulfil unmet consumer needs acts as a common thread across our brands. From there, we keep our approach to beauty and wellness broad so we can identify the categories that are ripe for disruption. This is dictated by what we see customers and retailers looking for. Maesa thinks like a portfolio of brands, looking at cross-category innovation and ideas. For example, we've seen a lot of success in the haircare space, so have since leveraged our work in the fragrance category to move into haircare fragrance, bridging two areas of expertise. Another example is the post-pandemic wellness boom, where we saw a need for wellness-oriented brands in the mass channel, and could make the concept more accessible. That's when we launched Being Frenshe. Today, we are leveraging our consumer insights team to identify the next growth spots. In the near future, we are exploring the male grooming space — and Maesa has just entered the intimate wellness category with the launch of our Niches & Nooks brand. How are the channels for reaching beauty consumers evolving? The initial discovery of brands often happens in-store, where we prioritise wide distribution. How we then drive that awareness over time has become a key focus, especially in a saturated market. We are starting to experiment with different methods — we launched our first TV commercial for haircare brand Kristin Ess on Bravo earlier this month, for example. We are using influencers and social media extensively to generate brand heat. Being both an incubator and an operator has allowed us to innovate more quickly — from Blue Sky idea generation to the shop floor in under nine months. We are not chasing mass awareness — that is not the objective. However, we are thinking about tapping into the next level of consumers and meeting those new customers where they are spending time. Maesa's Being Frenshe brand places emphasis on hair wellness How is technology leveraged to scale your own brands? Acknowledging the growth in fragrance, we took a proposition to Target almost five years ago — and the opportunity for a strategy in this category that would allow for their customers to access great fragrance at a reasonable price point. This was the launch of our first fragrance brand Mix:Bar, followed by Fine'ry in 2023. Target remains Fine'ry's exclusive retail partner today. Since launch, we have received a lot of consumer attention, which reflects the demand for this kind of product at this price point. We keep our approach to beauty and wellness broad so we can identify the categories that are ripe for disruption. This is dictated by what we see customers and retailers looking for. In terms of technology, we have leant heavily into artificial intelligence (AI) in our creative campaigns to sustain that attention. It has created a significant amount of high-quality campaign content — and a cost-saving way of maintaining that virality. Technology and data also play a role in how we understand different Fine'ry customers. For example, we have used AI to create personalised fragrance profiles to reflect them and there is still a lot more to explore. How does Maesa approach product innovation when it comes to its own brands? Being both an incubator and an operator has allowed us to innovate more quickly — with our fastest incubation going from Blue Sky idea generation to the shop floor in under nine months. But when we think about innovation, we first consider the DNA of the brand and where the consumers of the brand will give you license to go. For some brands, it is easy to innovate into new products and categories because the essence of the brand doesn't confine itself to a specific vertical. Take Being Frenshe, which started from a broader spectrum. Maesa considered the spaces where consumers desire wellness, which gave us an opportunity to experiment with new product formats, such as the Being Frenshe Hair, Body and Linen Mist. This year, we took the brand into haircare because hair wellness is growing traction among consumers. Wherever wellness travels, we believe we can take the brand. What are the key strategic objectives for Maesa over the medium term? Our goal is to think and operate as a next-gen beauty company, with a broad portfolio across beauty and wellness. Five years ago, we were a small company. Today, we are mid-size and thinking about the next phase of our journey. Making sure our research and development cycle remains quick and competitive is a big part of that — it's how we will build a diversified portfolio of brands and pay close attention to where the consumer is headed. Our ambition is to be the fastest growing beauty company, consistently finding innovative ways to meet unmet consumer needs by, what we call, 'unleashing Maesa Magic.' This is a sponsored feature paid for by Maesa as part of a BoF partnership.