When the brand formerly known as Bite Beauty announced it was closing in May of 2022, fans were devastated.
“I’m so saddened to hear this,” commented Neil Silverman, a professional hair and makeup artist. “I love your products so much.”
“Because I have celiac, you've been my go-to gluten-free makeup brand,” added Erin Brozek, a long-time Bite Beauty fan. “I love and trust your products! So sorry to see you go.”
But there was a silver lining to this sad news: Bite’s Lip Labs, the brand’s experiential retail stores, would remain open, with plans to expand to more locations. In the subsequent months, Bite Beauty changed their name to Lip Lab, and rebranded stores and online to suit.
Founded by Susanne Langmuir in 2011, Bite Beauty specialized in natural lip products from the very start. The formulas were made from food-grade ingredients and were supposedly safe to eat. The brand was acquired by Kendo in 2014 for an undisclosed amount, but it was reported at the time that the brand did $30 million in retail sales annually.
Bite Beauty reformulated all products in the brand to be vegan back in 2019, which caused some backlash from fans who felt like the new products didn’t measure up to the ones they previously discontinued. This, combined with the effect that the pandemic had on color cosmetics and the beauty industry overall, could have been what led to Kendo’s decision to drop the retail products and pivot to expanding the more profitable Lip Lab concept.
“As Sephora continued to grow and bring in new brands, and Kendo continued to add brands to their lineup, Bite sadly fell by the wayside and faced a lot more competition,” Rachel Anise, a college Communication Studies Professor and beauty industry expert, told BeautyMatter when asked what went wrong with the brand. “Bite was chiefly a [lip-focused] line for a long time. They tried to add some new things in [like] the foundation line, but it was too little too late. So many color brands at Sephora had full face options, and the fact that Bite was limited to lips probably worked to its detriment.”
Today, Lip Lab has nine locations across the US and Canada, with the latest opening in Los Angeles’ Century City Westfield Mall last month. This comes on the heels of recent openings in Nashville, TN; Fashion Valley in San Diego, CA; and building on longstanding locations in New York City’s Soho and Brooklyn neighborhoods―as well as Toronto, Las Vegas, NV; Irvine, CA; and Dallas, TX. The brand plans to double its store count by the end of next year.
While most beauty brands are competing for limited shelf space at retailers, Lip Lab has bowed out of the competition altogether and is betting big on the brand’s innovative in-person experience. With Bite Beauty officially laid to rest, can Lip Lab rise from the ashes to create an even bigger beauty empire? BeautyMatter spoke to the brand and a beauty industry expert to discuss its custom color-mixing process, how social plays a role in its success, and why this rebrand is significant.
The Lip Lab Experience
Lip Lab’s interactive experience is unlike any beauty counter you’ve been to before. It puts the consumer at the forefront of the process, working directly with Lip Lab’s color experts to craft a beautiful, bespoke lipstick or lip balm that matches their skin tone and shade preferences perfectly. At a time when many skincare brands are using artificial intelligence to better serve their customers, Lip Lab’s custom lipsticks are crafted the old-fashioned way: by humans using color theory to achieve the perfect shade.
“Lip Lab consultations are led by a color expert who is trained specifically in color theory while also considering guests’ requests and lifestyle,” Diana Peinado, Vice President of Lip Lab Boutiques, told BeautyMatter. “All customizable products are made by hand.”
Pricing starts at $35 for a custom lip balm, $65 for a custom lipstick, or $100 for two lipsticks. Consumers can also choose their finish for the lipstick (matte, satin, or sheer) as well as the product’s flavor (fruity, floral, or fresh).
Once consumers customize their lipstick and lip balm in-store, they can repurchase the custom color on Lip Lab’s website by entering the custom shade name from their store visit. Additionally, if a customer sees a shade on social media that they love, they can order that exact shade by entering the shade name and original creator name.
Unlike many beauty and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands today, the digital shopping experience comes second to the in-person shopping experience. Lip Lab is taking the DTC model we know and flipping it on its head, getting people in the door at Lip Lab boutiques across two countries before turning them into online customers.
Lip Lab also offers its best-selling Agave Nighttime Lip Therapy and Agave Weekly Lip Scrub online, along with a few select shades crafted by the brand’s various boutiques, at a discounted price of $40. All products are clean, vegan, and housed in refillable packaging.
A New Approach to Social Selling
The interactive experience of creating a custom lip color is meant to be shared—both online and in real life. In addition to Lip Lab’s one-on-one and small group appointments, the brand also hosts parties of up to 20 people. According to Peinado, 75% of guests book with two friends or more, and 20% of guests book parties of seven or more.
“We are a social beauty destination,” said Peinado. “We bring people together to have fun and make memories.”
The Lip Lab experience is a recipe for TikTok success. From the aesthetic look of the stores―complete with multiple interesting backdrops and selfie-ready mirrors to the super satisfying paint smears that crafting a custom lipstick shade requires―it has all the trappings of a viral video. The #liplab hashtag on TikTok currently has over 21.5 million views.
The experience frankly sells itself, but it helps that the TikTok algorithm recommends content based on location before serving it to relevant audiences in the area. This, combined with the aesthetic nature of the stores and experience, is why customers in places like New York or Nashville have almost definitely seen their local Lip Lab boutique on their For You page. Lip Lab also partners with influencers for both paid and gifted brand collaborations, showcasing the unique retail concept.
Rebrand Gone Right
Surprisingly, the first Lip Lab opened way before TikTok took over social media. The first store opened in Soho, New York, in 2012, to bring a sensorial lipstick manufacturing experience directly to the consumer.
With the rebrand in 2019, Lip Lab repositioned itself as a personalized beauty brand. Instead of leaning on data, like many personalized skincare brands that were becoming popular at that time, it went in the opposite direction―leaning into the art of personalization.
“We started to expand the brand at the end of 2019, with the focus of being a custom beauty brand and providing a social entertainment experience to our guests,” said Peinado. “Through the rebrand journey, Lip Lab decided to put the consumer at the center of the experience, which led to the positioning ‘made by you.’ This thinking led us to define what type of environment and imagery would support the consumer being inspired to make custom color for themselves.”
The extensive rebrand includes remodeled stores with an updated website and modern imagery. Not only does the new branding reflect consumers’ desire for new color inspiration and elevated experiences, but it also capitalizes on their continued interest in personalized, customized cosmetics in which they play a key role in the creation process.
Today’s consumers are cutting back on everyday goods and spending more on services. With the rising costs of groceries and other household basics, when consumers do spend money on beauty, they want personalized and luxury experiences. Luxury beauty and fashion retailer Moda Operandi offers beauty experiences alongside its product offerings, including a trip to Iceland for $13,000. Lip Lab’s under $100 price point hits that accessible luxury sweet spot that many average beauty consumers can and want to spend on a custom beauty experience. Customers walk away with a product they can use every day, not just on special occasions. “It allows [consumers] to feel like they’re spending their money the best way possible because they’ve had a hand every step of the way in creating that color or formula,” said Anise. “There’s no regret. You have so much buy-in that I think it enhances the ultimate value, not only of the experience but of the product itself.”
“Consumers want to be able to buy things that are relevant to them ... to have fun and be creative,” said Peinado. “[They want] experiences when they shop [and a] connection to brands and products.”
The success of Lip Labs around the country and in Canada has proven, at least so far, that personalized beauty done right is repeatable, scalable, and profitable. While closing Bite Beauty might’ve been a shock to customers, Lip Lab’s return to its roots has been a refreshingly effective pivot.
“Lip Lab started with the intent to provide a sensorial custom beauty experience; an experience delivered by a highly trained color expert,” said Peinado. “This is our heritage and why we believe we connect so well with our consumers.”
Rebrands are notoriously difficult to pull off, and from a wide-angle view, it would appear that Lip Lab has made a series of missteps that led to the need for a complete brand refresh. They reformulated cult-status products in an attempt to imitate what their competitors were doing, losing some fans in the process. They shuttered a beloved brand to go into stand-alone retail in the aftermath of the pandemic, just months before every Morphe store shuttered as the brand shifted from retail to refocus on wholesale and e-commerce. They're hiring hundreds of employees to hand mix custom shades instead of incorporating some new and advanced technology to make the whole experience cheaper, faster, and more accurate. At a time when most brands are focusing on optimizing the customer’s e-commerce experience, Lip Lab is prioritizing the real-life, in-store shopping experience first before inviting their customers to shop online.
And yet, Lip Lap continues to grow, with plans to expand the brand’s personalized beauty portfolio of products.
“We have a roadmap for products that can be customized to be ‘made by you’ and will also continue to thoughtfully expand our [ready-to-wear] ‘made for you’ items to compliment custom items,” said Peinado.
A representative from Lip Lab told BeautyMatter exclusively that the brand is gearing up to launch new custom gloss and custom multi-sticks as part of the Lip Lab experience. Additionally, the brand has plans to add lip liners and more custom components to its online store.
Not all rebrands are successful at moving past the controversy that once plagued them. Kat Von D, now KVD Beauty, has yet to recapture fans the way it did when the brand’s founder was at the helm. The same can be said for Lime Crime, which pivoted from a color cosmetics brand to a hair color brand in 2021. Vanessa Hudgens recently relaunched KNOW Beauty without her co-founder Madison Beer and without much fanfare.
“I think if you’re trying to resuscitate a brand, you have to make a bold move and do something fresh, innovative, and unexpected, and they’re certainly doing that with these stores,” said Anise. “Only time will tell, but I think they’re giving it a really valiant effort.”
Unlike other brands, Bite Beauty’s rebrand is more of a coming home. Since opening the first Lip Lab in Soho in 2012 and selling to Kendo in 2014, Lip Lab evolved again and again until it arrived at what looks to be both the first and final chapter of the brand. Instead of imitating other brands that were on the shelves next to it, Lip Lab went back to the brand’s core differentiator: an experiential retail format that no other brand could compete with. It will be interesting to see how the brand continues to scale, and the role that AI and e-commerce will play in its expansion. But if Lip Lab continues on the growth trajectory that it’s currently on, it might just turn out to be the best comeback in beauty history.
