How Topicals Built a Cult Skincare Brand by Understanding Their Audience
Most skincare brands start with product formulation. They perfect textures, choose packaging colors, design logos, and build Instagram-worthy aesthetics.
Topicals did the opposite. Before founders Olamide Olowe and Claudia Teng chose a single color or designed any packaging, they got crystal clear on one thing: who they were serving.
That decision made all the difference.
Just nine months after launch, Topicals hit Sephora shelves nationwide, and by 2022, they were selling one product per minute, earning the title of Sephora's fastest-growing skincare brand.
Here's how they did it, and what your brand can learn from their approach.
The Foundation Every Brand Needs (But Most Skip)
Understanding your target audience's demographics, needs, purchasing habits, and life stages is essential to knowing who you're marketing to. Yet most new businesses rush past this step, eager to start creating content and selling products.
The problem? When you're for everyone, you're for no one.
Your messaging becomes so broad that nobody feels like you're talking directly to them.
Topicals understood this from day one.
Why Topicals Started With WHO
Most skincare brands ignored conditions like hyperpigmentation and eczema, even though people of color experience these conditions up to six times more frequently than other demographics.
Instead of targeting "everyone with skin" or "people who want better skincare," Topicals defined their WHO with laser focus: people dealing with overlooked skin conditions like hyperpigmentation, eczema flares, texture, and marks that traditional skincare didn't prioritize.
This wasn't just market segmentation. It was understanding an underserved community on a deep level.
Both founders had personal experience with these conditions. Olowe grew up with hyperpigmentation and recalls countless dermatologist appointments where doctors said they didn't know how to treat her darker skin.
Teng spent her childhood seeking treatment for severe eczema and witnessed the disparity in healthcare access for people of color while working as a dermatology clinical research assistant.
They didn't just identify a target audience. They were their target audience.
How Knowing WHO Unlocked Everything Else
Once Topicals nailed down their WHO, every other strategic decision became clearer.
Their WHY Emerged Naturally
Their mission became bigger than selling products: to destigmatize chronic skin conditions and support the mental health of people who live with them.
This WHY wasn't manufactured for marketing purposes. It flowed directly from understanding their audience's deeper needs.
Their WHAT Solved Real Problems
The founders re-examined what are considered "gold standards" in the beauty industry, questioning ingredients and formulations that hadn't been tested on diverse skin tones. They didn't create "another skincare line." They built science-backed solutions for conditions the industry avoided.
Their product names reflected this clarity: "Faded" for hyperpigmentation, "Like Butter" for hydration. No confusion about what each product does or who it's for.
Their WHERE Strategy Was Intentional
The brand also met their community where they already gathered, using platforms and spaces centering culture and community, from social media to retail partners like Sephora that support discovery.
They weren't trying to be everywhere. They were being strategic about where their audience actually spent time.
The Results of Foundation-First Strategy
The specificity worked.
Since launch, Topicals attained cult status among Gen Z, building a community of over 35,000 members, selling out at Sephora and Nordstrom in under 48 hours.
But perhaps most importantly, they built a loyal community that feels seen, understood, and served, exactly what happens when your brand and business foundation is rock-solid.
What Brand Positioning Really Means
Brand positioning is about owning a unique position in the mind of your target consumer. It's an articulation of what you want your brand to be to consumers, established relative to your competition in a way that signals differentiation.
Topicals positioned themselves not as another skincare brand, but as the brand that finally addressed conditions mainstream beauty ignored.
That clarity became their secret weapon.
The Components of Effective Brand Positioning
Research on successful brand positioning reveals several critical elements:
Target Audience: A good approach is to segment the market and identify the specific group of consumers that your brand aims to serve. Defining the right audience ensures the selection of the right type of positioning strategy.
Unique Value Proposition: The unique value proposition is the cornerstone of an effective positioning strategy. It encapsulates all the benefits and advantages the brand offers its target audience.
Brand Promise: A company's commitment to deliver on the brand's core values and the unique experience it offers. It establishes trust and fosters long-term loyalty among target customers.
Topicals nailed all three by starting with WHO.
Why Most Brands Get This Wrong
Many new entrepreneurs think their offerings are for everyone when they launch their businesses. They worry that narrowing their focus will limit their market size.
The opposite is true.
Through segmentation, you can identify niches with specific needs and deliver more personalized and relevant messages to engage with different audiences.
Strategic brand positioning with targeted segmentation helps you craft much more effective marketing messages that are highly tailored and specific to audience segments, giving you a greater chance of conversions and healthy ROI. Topicals proved this.
By targeting people with chronic skin conditions specifically, they created messaging that resonated deeply instead of getting lost in generic "self-care" noise.
The Lesson for Your Brand
You don't need to launch with perfect branding, a massive budget, or thousands of followers.
You need clarity on who you're serving.
When you know your WHO with specificity—not just demographics, but their real problems, their lived experiences, what they've tried and failed with before—everything else becomes easier.
Your messaging writes itself. Your product decisions have a clear filter. Your marketing channels become obvious. Your community builds organically because people finally feel seen.
Topicals redefined what skincare can look like. Not just self-care, but self-acceptance. Not just beauty, but belonging. This is what happens when you build with intention, stay rooted in purpose, and speak to people as they matter.
Ready to Build Your Brand Foundation?
If you're launching or relaunching your business and want the kind of clarity that Topicals built their success on, you don't have to figure it out alone.
Join Launch Lab — my three-session strategic intensive where we clarify your mission, values, positioning, and ideal client so your brand has a clear point of view and direction. We'll define your services, pricingdirection, and structure so your offers align with your capacity and income goals. Then we'll map out your priorities and create a focused 90-day roadmap so you know exactly what to work on next.
Each session builds on the last, and you'll receive customized strategy deliverables to support implementation after our work together.
Because here's the truth: marketing only works when the foundation is solid. Get your WHO right first, and everything else falls into place.
