Luxe-for-less leader MCoBeauty talks international expansion

Founded in 2016, luxe-for-less beauty brand MCoBeauty has seen massive growth over the past several years, and is expecting revenue growth of up to 90 per cent in 2023. With international expansion on the horizon, we sat down with founder and CEO Shelley Sullivan to talk through the brand’s journey, as well as what makes it tick.

Inside Retail: Can you talk us through what the past few years have been like at MCoBeauty, and how you’ve seen customers’ standards changing?

Shelley Sullivan: MCoBeauty is in its sixth year. It was started off the back of the success story of Model Co, which is my cosmetics and tanning brand. 

I had seen a niche in the mass market beauty space – when you walk into the Meccas and Sephoras of the world, you buy foundation for $60 to $80, so I thought, ‘Imagine if you could infiltrate that mass market and compete against L’Oreal, Covergirl, etc, but have a quality product at a luxe-for-less price,’ and that’s how the brand was formed. I saw that niche.

Now, we’re the number-one-selling brand in Woolworths and Big W. 

I think what we’re doing right is continuing to deliver quality at that lower price point. That’s really our brand strategy. And I do believe, to your question, that Australians’ standards are changing. I do believe women want that bit of luxury in their purse, they might want a Chanel lipstick, but at the end of the day, as long as the product delivers what it promises, why would they spend four times the price?

IR: It’s pretty clear it’s a challenging environment for those consumers at the moment. How has that affected the brand’s positioning as a luxe-for-less offering?

SS: Being an affordable solution is core to what we’re about. We have colour cosmetics and skincare, and we work with our manufacturers to formulate products of a quality that you’d get from a luxury brand at a more affordable price, and that’s working for us. 

It’s working in Australia, and we’re expanding our range into Chemist Warehouse in New Zealand. 

IR: Have you felt any of the inflationary pressures that we’re seeing across the supply chain?

SS: We have had some pressure on our supply chain due to Covid increasing prices – especially in freight. Freight has been a huge challenge, we often have to air freight things in because of pipeline restrictions due to product packaging. Some of our products are made in China, the US, Korea, and Australia, but we’ve managed to have very little price increases. The reason we’ve been able to do that is because our quantities are going up, and so we’re not needing to pass those increases on to the customer. 

IR: You said earlier that MCoBeauty is already in New Zealand, and is expanding there, but you’re also launching into the US soon. Can you tell me a bit about MCoBeauty’s expansion plans?

SS: Next to the US, New Zealand is probably our highest e-commerce country. We’re in Countdown and The Warehouse and in August we’ll be launching into Chemist Warehouse. 

In Countdown, they’ve seen the brand growing in Australia, so they’re expanding our range to 150 products. 

As for the US, we’re launching into stores there in 2024, and we’re talking to some major retailers at the moment. We haven’t got the plan locked in just  yet, but we’re definitely going there next year. 

IR: Are you approaching that market differently than you would approach Australia and New Zealand?

SS: We’re not. It’s a copy and paste. Our brand awareness is driven through social media, and really that’s our number one form of advertising: TikTok and Instagram, and Facebook digital advertising. We do very little traditional advertising, we’re almost entirely digital, and that’ll be the strategy heading into the US. 

IR: How do Australian beauty brands entering the US market tend to perform? 

SS: It depends on the strategy, really. I haven’t seen too many Australian brands forge their way into the US market recently. It’s hard, it’s kind of like Australia is this little country, where over there, it’s like 50 Australias in each city, so you’re talking to very different markets in each individual state. 

We’re certainly going to have our work cut out for us, but as long as we stick to the strategy that we’ve adopted here in Australia and New Zealand, I think we can be hugely successful. 

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