Rhode, Glossier Among Top 20 Indie Makeup Brands on TikTok

Call it indie agility.

According to data from Dash Hudson, indie makeup brands are outpacing the total beauty industry in terms of engagement rate and follower growth on TikTok, averaging 4.4 percent by engagement and 25.5 percent by year-to-date follower growth.

Beauty overall, by comparison, nets out at 4.1 percent and 7.7 percent by the respective metrics.

It’s no surprise that many of the platform’s heaviest hitters — including Kosas, whose following has grown at a rate of nearly 40 percent this year, and Glossier, which has a 10.2 percent average engagement rate second only to Florence by Mills in indie makeup — are among the flurry of brands which are reportedly up for potential sale this year.

As previously reported by WWD, Los Angeles-based Kosas has tapped North Point to navigate a sale; Glossier is working with Morgan Stanley; Rare Beauty, which ranks number-five by TikTok engagement, with Goldman Sachs and Raymond James, and Merit — which has seen 89.7 percent growth in its TikTok following this year — is also working with Goldman Sachs.

Makeup by Mario, which is the ninth-biggest indie by engagement, told WWD last month that it tapped investment bank J.P. Morgan to consider its options. The brand is projected by industry sources to be netting between $150 million to $200 million in annual sales.

There are also more nascent indies making a splash on TikTok: Violette_FR, whose founder Violette Serrat often takes to the platform to share French beauty tips — most recently how to “style” a red lip —is seeing rapid follower growth, as is Danessa Myricks Beauty and Patrick Ta Beauty.

Hailey Bieber’s Rhode also continues to make waves in the category.

“[Rhode] is a brand we’ve seen grow insanely fast through the last year,” said Quinn Yung, customer insights manager at Dash Hudson. The brand has a high TikTok engagement rate of 8.4 percent, with its top video this year — a behind-the-scenes compilation of Bieber’s shoot for Rhode’s summer lip tint shades — raking in more than 6.6 million views and 997,000 likes.

Like other top-performing celebrity brands, including Millie Bobbi Brown’s Florence by Mills, Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty and Ariana Grande’s R.e.m. Beauty, Rhode excels in leveraging a diverse network of retained creators, while harnessing the star power of its founder.

“These brands are bringing those parasocial relationships — which offer a very simple way for consumers to feel connected, even though they may be far apart — to their brand in a very authentic way,” said Jillian Robinson, Dash Hudson’s director of global communications and events. Florence by Mills, in particular, has long been engaged in the nano-influencer community, which further plays to this strength.

Other brands benefit from a quickness to jump on TikTok trends, including those that require a certain degree of commitment to the bit, like jumping into a body of water fully clothed (Summer Fridays), or preparing a makeshift “meal” of lip glosses after spending too much money on Prime Day (The Lip Bar).

“A lot of these brands have more creative freedom, and require less rounds of approval for content — this definitely pays off and can be seen in their growth,” Yung said.

The top 10 makeup indies on TikTok by average engagement rate in 2024, per Dash Hudson, are: