Launching a Beauty Brand
A go-to-market launch is the work of taking a brand into a market where it has no equity: positioning, retail and press groundwork, creator seeding and paid amplification, sequenced so that spend arrives after credibility rather than instead of it. Studio UNA has done it across Europe and the Gulf.
Spend arrives after credibility, not instead of it
The default launch plan is to buy attention. Book the media, brief the creators, announce loudly, and hope the noise converts into a brand people believe in. It works for categories where the purchase is low consideration and the product speaks for itself. Beauty is not one of them.
A skincare buyer entering a new market has no reason to trust you and every reason not to. The claim is unverifiable at the point of purchase, the category is saturated, and the shopper has been disappointed before. What they respond to is corroboration — someone they already trust having a view, a retailer they recognise carrying it, a press mention they did not pay for.
So the sequencing we use puts paid media last. Not because advertising does not work, but because it works far better pointed at something that already has traction.
The order
1. Position for the market you are entering
Not the home market translated. Claims regulation differs, the competitive set differs, and the cultural reference points differ enough that a proposition which lands in London can be meaningless in Riyadh. This is the step most often skipped and the one that quietly determines everything after it.
2. Groundwork before announcement
Retail conversations and press relationships built before anything is public, because both run on calendars that do not move for a launch date. Retail timelines are usually the binding constraint on the whole plan.
3. Seed a base of independent voices
Creators and press who will say something about the brand that the brand did not write. This is slower than paying for placements and it is what makes the paid layer work later — and, increasingly, what determines whether an AI assistant will name you when someone asks for a recommendation in your category.
4. Amplify what is already working
Paid media applied to the assets, angles and partners that have already earned a response organically. By this point you are scaling a known quantity rather than guessing.
Where we have done this
Spain and France
An organic-first, dual-market debut for ETC. Beauty — a brand with no local equity and a mandate to avoid heavy awareness spend. We borrowed authority from one culturally credible partner, ran boutique PR on the ground in Paris and Madrid, and used paid media only as an amplifier. The full go-to-market breakdown is here.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE
We built the ASTERI Beauty universe across the Gulf from a standing start, scaling a brand-new social channel to over 18,000 engaged followers and 107 million impressions in six months. The detail is here.
United Kingdom
Our home market, and the one where the competitive set is most crowded and the press hardest to move. Usually the market where organic-first matters most, because paid attention is expensive and easily ignored.
On cost
This is the question we are asked first and the one with the least honest answers in circulation. The range is genuinely wide, and it is driven by how many markets you are entering, whether retail is involved, how much seeding is needed to build a credible base, and how much amplification sits behind it.
An agency quoting a figure before knowing those things is guessing, and usually guessing low in order to win the conversation. We scope it properly after a first call, and we would rather lose a pitch than anchor you to a number we cannot stand behind.
What we would tell you not to do
Do not launch in three markets at once because the deck looks more ambitious. Do one properly, learn what transfers, then move.
Do not buy a large creator campaign before you know which single partner actually moves your category. One credible voice does more than thirty paid ones, and finding the right one is cheap.
And do not treat the launch as the finish line. The first eight weeks after launch decide whether anything compounds, and they are consistently the least resourced part of the plan.
Questions founders ask
What does a launch actually involve?
Positioning and claims that work in the target market rather than translated from the home one, retail and press groundwork before anything is announced, creator seeding to build a base of independent voices, and paid media last, as an amplifier of something already working. The order matters more than any individual element.
How long does it take?
Three to six months from brief to visible launch for a single market, depending on how much of the positioning already exists and whether retail is involved. Retail timelines are usually the constraint, because buying calendars do not move for anyone.
What does it cost?
It varies more than any other question we are asked, and any agency quoting a single figure without knowing your category, markets and retail ambitions is guessing. The drivers are the number of markets, whether retail is involved, how much creator seeding is needed to build a credible base, and how much paid amplification sits behind it. We scope it properly after a first conversation.
Can you launch without a large advertising budget?
Yes, and it is often the better sequence. An organic-first launch borrows credibility from partners, press and creators, then uses paid media to amplify what already has traction. It is slower to show a curve and it produces something more durable than buying attention for a brand nobody has a reason to trust yet.
Which markets do you cover?
The United Kingdom, Spain, France, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates directly, with a team split between London and Mumbai. We would rather say no to a market we do not understand than take it on and learn at your expense.