Youthforia Expands Date Night Foundation Shade Range After Facing Criticism Over Lack Of Shade Inclusivity

In a TikTok video posted September 27 last year, content creator Golloria George criticized what was then the darkest shade of Youthforia’s 15-shade Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation for not matching her skin tone and appearing differently on the brand’s model than on her face. She lamented, “I feel like I’ve been lied to so bad…It’s not tone inclusive.”

Youthforia founder Fiona Co Chan heard the criticism and spun into action. She issued two apology videos on TikTok. Apology video No. 1 explained that, for cost reasons, Youthforia restricted its initial foundation range to 15 shades to establish “proof of concept” by determining if the base formula resonated with consumers before the shade range was expanded. It didn’t sit right with George, influencer Jackie Aina and others, who knocked Co Chan for making people with dark skin tones an afterthought.

Apology video No. 2 was more contrite. “I’m extremely sorry,” said Co Chan in the video. “When I first started Youthforia two years ago, all I wanted to do was create a space where individual beauty could be celebrated, and unfortunately, with our latest launch, we just fell short of that mission.”

Away from the glare of TikTok, Co Chan was busy trying to align Youthforia with that mission by pushing its South Korean factory to speed up Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation’s shade expansion. Rather than release the next 10 shades in 24 months, the brand and factory reduced the timeline to four months.

“There’s limitations in terms of the number of shades I can do, but there’s things I can control,” Co Chan tells Beauty Independent. “The distribution of the shade family, that’s something, and putting feedback into action as quickly as possible, but doing it thoughtfully.”

Today, Youthforia is releasing 10 additional shades of Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation. Now, Co Chan points out that about half of the foundation’s 25 shades are medium deep to deep. With the shade range extension, Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation is rolling out to 525 Ulta Beauty doors. Credo’s website will also carry the broadened suite of shades.

“I’m always looking to see where there are gaps,” says Co Chan. “If I see a gap, I’m definitely going to go back into the lab and expand, but, in terms of the deepest of deep, I think we do have several options.”

Youthforia has been soliciting external expertise to help it spot gaps and educate its 10-person team on questions of diversity, equity and inclusion. Maude Okrah, founder of Black Beauty Roster, a DEI platform committed to fostering meaningful diversity in the beauty industry, hosted a DEI training session for Youthforia and co-hosted a listening session with the brand to learn about the Black beauty experience from content creators, makeup artists and models.

Beauty Independent reached out to George to see if she’d provide input on Youthforia expanding its foundation shade range, and she declined. Co Chan says she hasn’t reached out to George personally, but emphasizes Youthforia has been careful to assemble a diverse roster of influencers promoting Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation.

Co Chan says the brand has achieved “equal distribution in terms of shade representation across the influencers that we work with on a paid basis, especially for this launch. For the first couple of years of Youthforia, paid influencers weren’t a big part of our strategy. We just didn’t have the budget for it. We were so tiny, but definitely we’re going to be doing it with this launch.”

On TikTok, Youthforia has been sharing content on the journey of developing and marketing its expanded foundation shade range. The brand demonstrates on social media that the darkest shade of Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation’s enlarged shade range is darker than the darkest shade of Fenty Beauty’s darkest shade of foundation. Fenty Beauty set the bar for inclusive foundation shade ranges by unveiling Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation in 40 shades in 2017. The foundation’s shade range has since increased to 58 shades.

“My advice to my younger self six months ago would be wait until you actually have more resources and you’re a little bit bigger.”

In recent years, as the publication Business of Fashion chronicles in an article published last week on the erosion of the Fenty Beauty effect, a slew of beauty brands haven’t prioritized inclusive foundation shade ranges. Business of Fashion mentions Prada Beauty and Christian Louboutin Beauty as examples of brands that have scant dark shades in their foundation collections.

At smaller brands, even those interested in prioritizing inclusivity, expense is widely cited as a barrier to extensive foundation shade ranges. Co Chan estimates it cost Youthforia an amount in the “high six figures” to roll out Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation factoring in marketing and manufacturing. The brand reports the cost of its formula is equivalent to the cost of a popular $800 serum’s formula. At a large beauty company, Co Chan figures the expense of a foundation launch can rise to a “couple million dollars.”

“With Fenty, I think they definitely set a gold standard in terms of inclusivity. I think, as a much, much smaller brand where I’m not one of the biggest in the world, I don’t have that type of financial backing,” she says. “It creates a challenge where there is a limitation in terms of the manufacturing process, minimum order quantities and how do we launch.”

Co Chan elaborates, “Something that I looked at was just how did other smaller brands launch a foundation shade range, and how do they eventually expand? Most small brands launched with 14 to 16 shades and even larger brands launched complexion lines with under 25 shades. I mean, with Fenty, they eventually expanded their foundation shade range from what was 40 to 58, and I think that that’s going to be more and more common because I think it’s actually so important when you listen to feedback from customers.”

Youthforia previously pursued a tiered shade range launch strategy with its BYO Tinted Blush Oil, which has gone from a single shade to three shades and has a full-chain presence at Ulta in its roughly 1,400 stores. However, mindful of the criticism that tiered launch strategies for complexion products in particular convey that darker tones are afterthoughts for a brand, Co Chan has learned that strategy isn’t wise for them.

“For certain product lines, it’s OK to launch with a limited assortment, things like a blush or a lip color. I think for other product lines like complexion, my advice to my younger self six months ago would be wait until you actually have more resources and you’re a little bit bigger,” she says. “I think I came into this just really wanting to create a great formula and have a great product, but certain products lines I think require a lot more resources.”

Youthforia highlights that Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation is packed with 68% skincare actives, controls sebum and features a patented tannin complex to produce a glass skin finish. The brand touts that the foundation can be slept in. Co Chan says it conducted a dermatologist-monitored study with over 30 participants wearing the foundation to bed, and sleeping in it didn’t cause any issues. Priced at $48, Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation gets four out of five stars on Ulta’s site.

“This foundation is super versatile, so you can use it as a skin tint or a medium buildable coverage foundation. It just depends on how you apply it,” says Co Chan. “We get feedback from a lot of our customers that say, ‘I’m not a foundation girly, I don’t even wear skin tints, but this is exactly what I wanted.’”

In 2023, Youthforia secured funding from the firms True Beauty Ventures and Willow Growth Partners. Co Chan says the brand’s sales tripled last year, and it’s poised to grow “pretty significantly” in 2024. It has another face product on deck for later in the year. Along with Ulta and Credo, Youthforia is available at Revolve, Amazon, Soko Glam and J.C. Penney. Half of its sales are from retail.

The brand’s customers are largely gen Z and younger millennials, and Co Chan suggests a good portion of them haven’t been avid makeup users prior to purchasing Youthforia products. “It’s the skintellectual who knows their ingredients really, really well who have never really ventured into the makeup side. They could be in their late 20s, and I almost call this the second puberty where they’re discovering makeup,” she says. “So many customers say, ‘I don’t wear any makeup at all, but I’ll sleep in your makeup, and I trust it because I’ve historically had a bad experience or it was really hard to use.’ We try to make it really accessible.”