For sought-after makeup artist Gucci Westman and seasoned entrepreneur David Neville, taking the long view on constructing Westman Atelier is bearing fruit within the short term, too.

The husband-and-wife duo behind Westman Atelier have grown Westman Atelier right into a business with roughly 100 employees, and retail sales said to match at $100 million in 2023, in line with industry sources.

Westman Atelier, which launched in 2018, has taken a considered approach to expansion and a painstaking one to product development, constructing a powerhouse “clean” luxury brand in the method. That approach has earned the corporate the 2023 WWD Honor recipient for Best-Performing Beauty Company, Small Cap.

Westman Atelier’s success comes during a wave of makeup-artist led brands, including Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road and Mario Dedivanovic’s Makeup by Mario. Westman and Neville named the road’s product performance and luxury positioning as effective differentiators.

“There’s more of an appetite for this objective that we have now and see in our brand,” Westman said. “You may tell that every thing takes time, not just for the packaging, but our ethos: the formulas, the system, all of the things we’re attempting to do, and the indisputable fact that it’s skin care-rooted while still performing like makeup that’s stuffed with silicones.”

Somewhat than having a marketing-driven approach to product development, recent formulas come from Westman’s own desires. “It’s not based on trends, I’m an actual one who wears makeup and I’m busy — I’m a mom and a wife. [The products] are things that I see that I want, and lots of people feel the identical. It’s just easy ways to boost yourself with no transformation, it’s not complicated.”

That also implies that product launches are fewer and further between. Westman, who has worked with a string of celebrities — from Anne Hathaway to Gwyneth Paltrow — said to not expect a slew of foundations, or a cadence of newness in redundant categories.

“Once I worked with Lancôme and Revlon, I did seasonal collections a pair times per yr. This brand shouldn’t be about that. It’s a mindset,” Westman said. “It’s what I deem essential. I don’t ever need to create anything that feels frivolous.”

With that in mind, products are sometimes several years within the making. “The skin activator took the cake,” Westman said, nodding to the product’s five-year development period, which culminated in its launch earlier this yr. “We were initially going to make [the packaging] white, and I believed it will be so pretty as a translucent pink. That whole scenario pushed us back probably two years.”

Neville confirmed that the launch has exceeded expectations.

“We’ve executed so well on formula, package, brand, content and assets that we have now this interesting trifecta of artistry, luxury and high-performance, clean-formulated products that didn’t exist within the marketplace, and to some extent, still doesn’t,” he said. “The thought of what we call clean luxury is white space inside an incredibly saturated landscape.”

Though Westman’s experience lies in makeup, she looked to an adjoining beauty category as a north star. 

“We were super inspired by fragrance — the ads, the packaging — the entire concept of fragrance is more timeless and more emotional than makeup,” she said. “We wanted that moment to luxuriate in your routine and make it special.”

The brand’s prices range from $34 for mini products to $750 for a group of brushes, and it has each department store and specialty distribution within the U.S., including at prestige powerhouse Sephora. Neville contended that the way in which the brand approaches customers also helps it cut through the noise.

“It has never been more necessary to be founder-led and to have someone that speaks passionately about why they do what they do, and the way to use the products,” Neville said. “We sit with luxury brands in several environments, whether it’s luxury malls or specialty retailers like Sephora. There’s a competitive advantage that we have now that European luxury brands don’t have: a working founder that’s engaging directly with the shopper. Those brands rely rather more on the brand and the facility of brand name marketing.”

That strategy extends to social media, where Westman takes a gut-first approach to what she posts. At 330,000 followers on her personal Instagram alone, she appears to be striking a chord.

“At certain times, one thing works very well, after which it doesn’t. You’ve got to be nimble,” Westman said. But some key themes have evergreen appeal to her followers. “Fashion, once I show my rosacea, or once I do makeup tutorials.”

That has been the plan for the reason that brand’s inception. “All of our marketing dollars went to constructing content around Gucci and educating on the brand philosophy, and educating on the products,” Neville said. “That’s been such a strength of ours. She communicates so well on the brand and on her experience, that that’s been a simple one. It wasn’t overly complicated.”

Next up, the brand is seeking to expand to more international markets. “We haven’t touched Asia,” Neville said. The business is predominantly in North America, he said, with traction in Europe and an “incredible” business with Mecca Cosmetica in Australia and Latest Zealand.

“We’ve been quite measured in the way in which that we’ve expanded our distribution and geographically,” Neville said. “The strategy is to proceed in the identical vein and to proceed to be super focused on product integrity and to be very mindful about all the selections that we make, whether that’s distribution or whether that’s every other sort of product and brand extensions.”

From a category perspective, which means lipstick. “We still don’t have a lipstick, and that’s the most important makeup category. We do still have some whole categories inside makeup that we’d like to launch,” he said. “We’ve rather a lot to concentrate on, whether that’s our direct-to-consumer business, or the various retail relationships we have now globally. That’s rather a lot for us.”

Skincare has been a boon, and the plans don’t stop with the brand’s debut product. The Skin Care Activator “has way outperformed our expectation by way of percentage of business, and it’s indicator that we have now license to proceed to construct out a skincare offering in an additive way,” Neville said. “We’ve some launches slated for 2024.”

Those launches will take an identical approach to ingredients. The Skin Activator, for instance, has 4 forms of hyaluronic acid, in addition to peptides, noni fruit, niacinamide and prickly pear cactus extract.

“I loved the formula and I used to be interested to see what else we will do with an identical sort of complex,” Westman said. “So yeah, we’re working on some more skincare. Our brand is a real lifestyle brand, it feels that strategy to me with our collaborations that we’ve done with small, mainly female-founded brands, plus skincare.”

“When you consider the content Gucci does and the feedback we get from customers, it is that this intersection of wellness, beauty, fashion and design,” Neville said. “There’s something modern and dynamic about it.”

Neville, who cofounded Rag & Bone, noted that managing beauty inventory — which takes more money and time to develop, but lasts for much longer on shelf — is a key differentiator from fashion, but by way of garnering loyalty, the 2 sectors are congruent.

“Whether it’s fashion or beauty, whatever the product category, it’s the brand that speaks to you and ultimately decides if you ought to purchase. The basics are the identical,” Neville said. “You’ve got to construct a compelling brand and a compelling story with compelling product. And when those things align, and also you’re in front of the fitting customer, you’re going to achieve success.”