Morphe’s Founding
While Morphe Cosmetics has spent a long time in the limelight because of its influencer marketing, it is a relatively new company founded in 2008. The brother-sister duo, Chris and Linda Tawil founded Morphe to sell makeup brushes in Los Angeles before expanding to eyeshadow, face makeup, fake nails, and more. The company was founded to make high-quality makeup products at a lower cost to expand consumer access to superior makeup products.
Unusual Path: From Online to Storefront
Morphe started out as a purely online business selling makeup brushes. It soon expanded its products to include the now-famous large palettes complete with 35 different colors. Its 35-color palette “broke the website when we first sold it.” This clear success with digital allowed it to create the influencer partnerships it has today and to build brick and mortar stores. Morphe now has approximately 40 storefronts with many more in progress.
Influencer Marketing: Morphe Babes
Though many businesses harnessed social media marketing over the years, Morphe took it to the next level. Instead of influencers posting advertisements promoting products, the brand partnered with influencers, or “Morphe Babes,” to create an eyeshadow palette.
This collaborative approach to influencer marketing has been extremely successful for Morphe. When the brand works with an influencer, the product not only attracts the company’s fans, but also the influencer’s fans. Rather than seemingly pure advertising, beauty gurus’ fans see Morphe collaborations as created specifically for them. This style of marketing transforms eyeshadow advertisement into eyeshadow fan merchandise.
Morphe has worked with today’s most famous beauty influencers including Jaclyn Hill, James Charles, Jeffree Star, and many more. These partnerships are wildly successful, with one product selling out in 10 minutes. While the brand has its own cult following, the influencer recruits more potential customers who, after buying their idol’s makeup palette, purchase more Morphe products in the future.
This collaborative model is a mutually beneficial relationship. Morphe gets more exposure and more customers while the influencer receives a percentage of the profit from his/her palette and also receives exposure from a new source.
Morphe Cosmetics transformed social media influencer marketing to achieve its original goal to be “simple, affordable and trendy.”
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