Last year, e.l.f. Beauty shot and produced its first Super Bowl commercial, co-written by White Lotus creator Mike White and starring Jennifer Coolidge, and acquired skincare line Naturium for $355 million. The deft multitasking was but one example of why e.l.f. remains an anomaly in big beauty—maneuvering like a startup but with the budgets of a publicly traded company with a market cap around $10 billion.
The Oakland-based cosmetics brand also truly gets youth culture, despite being 20 years old—an almost ancient vintage in an industry that’s particularly prone to rapid trend cycles. E.l.f. was early to invest resources in TikTok, and among the first to cut a deal with Roblox. It also dropped a collab with Liquid Death, the attitudinal water brand, and partnered with Chipotle on makeup sold in silver cases that looked like burrito wrappers. (Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so cool…)
