How Indie Beauty Brands Are Surviving on Their Own

When meeting with aspiring brand founders, one thing never fails to amuse Julie Chung is their gall about investment.

“When they say, ‘I’m going to need $2 million and I’m looking for investors,’ I chuckle,” said Chung, who bootstrapped the premium hair tools brand T3 with her husband in 2004. “If [they] get that $2 million and didn’t earn any of it, they’re not going to think as critically about how they spend it.”

T3 became profitable in its first year and sells a range of blow dryers and curling irons. It is growing steadily, with sales increasing more than 20 percent each year for the last three years — no mean feat considering it is competing with mega-brands Dyson and SharkNinja. But it still has to be selective about entering new retailers (it is sold in the likes of Sephora and Ulta Beauty) or undertaking large marketing campaigns.

“We can’t just spend like no tomorrow,” said Kent Yu, the line’s co-founder. “For better or worse, we don’t have that luxury.”

Many independent beauty brands are being forced to make tough financial decisions to survive, and even those with ample funding have struggled: In the last 12 months, the likes of Ami Colé, Lottie London, Ciaté and Cover FX have all been shuttered, while boldfaced names like Pat McGrath Labs have entered bankruptcy. Having financial backing can be a life raft when the waters become choppy, but giving away equity can also mean giving away control. Investors can push founders to make decisions that prioritise top-line growth over profitability or brand-building to entice would-be acquirers.

For bootstrapped brands, the choice to sell a business can be on their own terms and timeline — and mean a bigger payday.

It requires hustle. “At one point, our margins were just razor thin,” said Michelle Hu, founder of self-funded cosmetics accessories company Étoile, adding that the business has always been profitable. Matthew Berkson said the fragrance line he co-founded, Maison Louis Marie without funding, can feel “outgunned” when it came to marketing at times.

But being self-funded pays other kinds of dividends.

“I really enjoy being independent … I can grow [Étoile] to my vision and not someone else’s,” said Hu.

Scrappy to Stay Alive

Scrappiness is a useful muscle for any founder. But for those operating a bootstrapped business, it’s an imperative.

Hu said she shot six-year-old Étoile’s initial brand photography with the help of her father and a bedsheet as a backdrop; Yu said he still scrutinises small expenses. Cassandra Morales Thurswell, founder of hair brand Kitsch, said she had sold her wares at flea markets to drum up initial demand. Morales Thurswell self-funded its launch in 2010, and grew it to be carried in more than 32,000 stores including Ulta Beauty and Target without outside investment. Sales are in the mid-nine figures.

Resourceful instincts make for good discipline, but as businesses scale up, costs and complexity can quickly rise. Brands can also struggle to make money in big retailers due to the high cost of fixtures and displays and the margin dilution from selling at wholesale prices.

Those growing pains are where many brands trip up, said Ilya Seglin, a managing director at the investment bank Cascadia, adding that retailers no longer function as the brand-building engines they used to. That means brands can be forced to take on investment if they’re not able to grow based on their balance sheets.

Independent brands may not be able to absorb shocks as well, either. Without the synergies and economies of scale of a large conglomerate, bombshells like the introduction of tariffs in the US and pullbacks or even increases in customer demand can apply unsustainable pressure. Yu said the rollout of tariffs in 2025 had been a “fire drill” for the brand; while they managed to avoid raising prices, T3 had prolonged out-of-stock periods due to unexpected virality, but careful financial discipline kept it afloat. Likewise, Étoile has kept a lean model with a lower headcount, meaning it has been able to manage costs efficiently and continued to grow.

Founders sometimes have to make tougher choices, but self-funded brands are usually better off marching to the beat of their own drum.

“Early on, if we would have taken investment, we would have taken a completely different path,” said Berkson.

“It might have worked… but it’s beautiful to not have to deal with that extra layer of pressure.”

Building a Brand That Lasts

Founder-owned brands often have a singular vision for how their brand should look and act. Sometimes, that moves in opposition to the market, and the demands of stakeholders.

Beauty investor Ryan Piela said that the most successful founders recognise that the opinions of retailers or would-be investors, may not be the same as their shoppers’ wants. “They have a vision and know what they stand for, but can still adjust to reach more customers without compromising [altogether],” he said.

Too many cooks can also ruin the pot. Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, the founder of Ami Colé told The Business of Beauty in 2025 that one reason her brand ran out of cash was investor pressure to launch in more stores and add more shades of foundation than the brand could sustain.

Founders can “focus on going narrow and deeper, as opposed to broader, which a lot of [investors] want you to do,” Seglin said. Hu said paid advertising was helping Étoile grow, but around 2022, she made the choice to refocus on organic growth, which meant investing more in photography, visuals and public relations. It paid off; stars like Dua Lipa and Kendall Jenner have been photographed with its products, and as of 2025, it’s an eight-figure business.

For Morales Thurswell, she didn’t visualise Kitsch necessarily being in top retailers like Sephora or winning industry plaudits. That meant she didn’t have the burden of external expectations.

“The thing that’s holding a lot of brands back is redefining what success really is,” she said.

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