Mango People is launching on Sephora’s website today, marking the cosmetics brand’s first retail partnership.
Sephora is carrying eight shades of Mango People’s $27 Cream Blush & Lip Multistick, three shades of its $27 Dewy Glow Cream Highlighter Stick and three shades of its $27 Sun-Kissed Cream Bronzer Stick. Part of the beauty specialty chain’s Clean + Planet Positive initiative, the brand is designed to be clean, inclusive and eco-conscious. Its products are encased in recycled aluminum, and their water-free formulas are made without petrochemicals and petroleum byproducts.
Founder Sravya Adusumilli had Sephora on her vision board before she invested $10,000 to bring Mango People to life in 2020, but she foresaw the brand’s partnership with it happening six years into its business rather than less than three. Participating in Sephora Accelerate, the retailer’s mentorship program, in 2022, sped up her dream becoming a reality.
“For the past year, we’ve been working very closely with them for this launch,” says Adusumilli, adding, “Launching at Sephora is just such a huge achievement, but I think being successful at a retailer is another whole ordeal. For the rest of the year, we’ll be hyper-focused on making our partnership with Sephora a great success and doing everything we can, redirecting all our resources and our time towards this partnership.”
Dewy Glow Cream Highlighter Stick
Cream Blush & Lip Multistick
The retailer has helped Mango People plan for its entrance into Sephora, including setting up Electronic Data Interchange or EDI, the digital system connecting retailers and brands, and securing a third-party logistics provider. Sephora is also supporting Mango People’s launch with email blast features and an in-app preview. Adusumilli will pop up on Sephora’s Instagram Stories to spread the word about Mango People launch at the retailer to its nearly 22 million followers as well.
At Mango People, Adusimilli and part-time social media coordinator Eileen Nguyen are sharing the Sephora news with the brand’s existing followers. One TikTok video posted this week about the launch has racked up more than 37,000 views. Adusimilli says, “We’re hoping with these videos we will, one, reach a new audience that has never heard of Mango People and, two, once they see the video, redirecting them to our Sephora product pages so they can easily make the purchase there.”
“For the rest of the year, we’ll be hyper-focused on making our partnership with Sephora a great success.”
In addition, Mango People is gifting products to BIPOC micro-influencers who post about skincare or suffer from skin issues like sensitive skin, acne and eczema. The brand began experimenting with product seeding earlier this year and is doubling down leading up to its Sephora launch. Adusimilli says, “We’ve been sending out these really cute, minimal, but very effective PR packages, and we’ve been so fortunate that many of them have actually already started sharing about the products and about the launch.”
Since April, Mango People has tapped public relations firm Evna Media for media outreach. The brand originally touched base with Evna Media a year ago, but Adusimilli explains, “We just weren’t ready at the time. It’s an expensive service, and I wanted to make sure that I could cover our retainer comfortably and that we’re financially very ready before we signed them on.” Evna Media founder Simona Rozhko shares that the PR firm’s monthly retainers range from $7,500 to $12,500. She says the price of PR depends on “the scope of work best fitting for the brand, the brand’s size, ultimate goals and the overall staffing required for their account.”
When a brand is launching a product or entering a big retailer, Evna Media likes to team up with it a few months in advance to generate hype. Rozhko says, “What’s hard is beauty brands are in the sea of so many other smaller brands, bigger brands, there’s so much competition out there, it’s such a saturated industry, and so we wanted to make sure that we built the Mango People foundation for a few months before we made the announcement into Sephora for editors to start getting familiar with the name, with the brand and with the products.”
In preparation for its Sephora launch, Mango People updated its product packaging to ensure customers can better tell its offerings apart. Dewy Glow Cream Highlighter Stick is now stored in cream packaging, Sun-Kissed Cream Bronzer Stick is in a brown-orange case, and Cream Blush & Lip Multistick hasn’t strayed from its original olive green container. A forthcoming primer will be housed in a bright green container.
