The MERIT Edit
How a Minimalist Beauty Brand Is Winning The Beauty Space
Over the past decade, the beauty industry has become heavily saturated with hyper-product launches and maximalist routines. As a result, standing out in this overcrowded market requires brands to demonstrate distinct originality and identify untapped gaps within the space.
In 2021, MERIT BEAUTY was founded, a beauty brand centred around clean luxury minimalism at an attainable price point. To date, the brand has generated over $100 million in cumulative revenue and since launch day sells one product every 17 seconds through its direct-to-consumer website.
Before the brand’s launch in 2021, the beauty industry had a clear white space. The market was inundated with hundreds of beauty brands for the younger Gen Z consumer, but none with cross-generational appeal for both the Gen Z consumer and more professional and mature beauty lovers. Founder of MERIT Beauty, Katherine Powers, saw this gap and decided to create a beauty brand that blended luxe high-end design with high performance and clean ingredients, all at an attainable price point.
This case study is in partnership with Tracksuit, where we will delve into how MERIT Beauty, founded just 5 years ago, has challenged heritage brands and become one of the most loved brands within the beauty space.
The data used in this case study is from the US “Makeup & Cosmetics” category from January 2025 - December 2025.
Less Is More, and the Data Proves It
Founded by serial entrepreneur Katherine Power, whose career spans category-defining brands from Who What Wear to Versed and Avaline, MERIT Beauty was born from a clear, practiced instinct for identifying white space.
Rather than catering to hyper-youthful beauty or traditional luxury codes, MERIT set out to offer a five-minute makeup routine built on ease, restraint, and polish, a strategy that now shows up clearly in the data.
The brand over-indexes on awareness with 25–34 year-olds (30% vs. 19% category) while also outperforming with 35–44s (21% vs. 17%), validating its ability to bridge older Gen Z and millennials without relying on youth-coded tropes. While MERIT’s funnel remains intentionally narrow, with awareness at 11%, consideration at 5%, usage at 2%, and preference at 1%, they are growing steady at a healthy rate.
Competing against brands with exponentially greater scale, MERIT shows a healthy, stable progression from awareness to preference, signaling clear brand understanding, low friction to trial, and early preference formation. For a brand founded in 2021, this consistency confirms that minimalism is not merely an aesthetic choice, but a strategic one, with positioning doing the building the foundation long before mass awareness arrives. This is where always-on brand tracking is critical — allowing marketers to understand not just how big a brand is, but how clearly it is understood as it grows.
Forward Thinking Brand Aesthetic
MERIT Beauty came at a time when the beauty landscape was inundated with brands repeatedly tailoring their products and brand aesthetics to fit the needs of the younger Gen Z consumer. Brands such as Glossier were an absolute hit with these younger groups; however, it left consumers outside of this demographic with nowhere to shop for more mature, professional beauty products. Therefore, when MERIT Beauty launched its sleek, minimalist makeup, it became a huge success within the industry.
Tailored to the more mature professional consumer, the brand succeeded in acquiring cross-generational appeal by winning the millennial generation as well as gaining Gen Z interest. This cross-generational interest is due to the brand’s disruptive product innovation within the beauty space.
Their adoption of neutral colour palettes and minimalist packaging aligns the brand closely with luxury fashion, integrating their products seamlessly into everyday life as everyday luxuries.
In an interview in 2023 with Forbes, Senior Vice President and now Founding Chief Marketing Officer, Aila Morin explained,
“A lot of our references are actually built from fashion, architecture, and everyday objects. We focus on our team having blinders to what everybody else in beauty is doing, and instead being inspired by the larger art world around us, which leads to the brand looking differentiated.”
By taking references from fashion and world culture, MERIT Beauty is a brand categorised by its chic minimalist aesthetic that embodies a sense of understated luxury for the professional, mature consumer.
Their minimalist yet luxurious product design is tailored to fit the needs of the girl on the go. With their first launch, compressing a 10-15 step beauty routine into 7 multifunctional products, consisted of sheer formulas and easy-to-use applicators.
Savvy Storytelling
MERIT focuses its digital-first storytelling on the brand’s understated luxury minimalism that takes its beauty products back to simplicity that lasts. The brand recently shared a series of posts, highlighting iconic products that have stood the test of time, despite never changing their design.
The post centered around their minimalist complexion stick amongst other iconic products, such as the bic pen, Mason Pearson Brush and Levi’s 501 jeans, placing their signature product at the centre of icons that have stood the test of time.
In May 2025, when MERIT launched ‘The Uniform’ they gave credit to Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, highlighting his simplistic look consistently over time. For brand marketers, this highlights the value of looking beyond your category to build stronger brand equity.
Another of MERIT Beauty’s biggest strengths is its tailored celebrity partnerships. The brand’s “On My Way” campaign features a series of brand friends, celebrities, and influencers showcasing their MERIT beauty routines in an almost Vogue beauty secrets format. This is tailored for various platforms, ensuring a wide reach as well as positioning their products at the centre of celebrities’ routines who fit their brand aesthetic and message.
In more recent partnership was a get-ready style short form video with Whitney Leavitt, who was a big favourite on the latest season of Dancing with the Stars. These low-effort and conversational posts place MERIT Beauty at the centre of pop culture moments, further positioning them as the go-to brand for chic beauty essentials.
Brand association analysis also shows that MERIT leads with intentionality, not spectacle with the following qualities: clean, natural, simple and premium.
These insights clarify which brand associations are already distinctive and where future creative and media efforts can reinforce equity.
This visual contrast confirms the brand’s core value and what it shows throughout its marketing and design; less is more and don’t overthink it. MERIT isn’t trying to be louder, it’s trying to be clearer. And with revenue projections of over $100,000 million, consumers are rewarding that clarity and trust with the willingness to pay.
Where Beauty Meets Utility
As the beauty landscape becomes increasingly dominated by digital interactions, MERIT Beauty sets itself apart by investing in the physical customer experience. While many digital-first beauty brands focus heavily on social media presence and online storytelling, MERIT recognises that while this is important, true brand loyalty is often formed at the moment of physical interaction and experience.
Consumers also receive a complimentary pouch with every purchase that is cross-functional, both as a makeup bag or clutch accessory. The pouch functions as a tangible brand touchpoint, transforming the first purchase into a curated experience rather than a transactional exchange.
The free clutch with every purchase initiative was transformed in 2023 with a MERIT x Proenza Schouler collaboration. The partnership turned the clutch into a chic, reversible vegan leather bag that looks like it came straight off the runway. The limited edition collection consisted of the new bag and an array of MERIT’s staple products.
By offering a well-designed, reusable accessory rather than a traditional sample or discount incentive, MERIT reinforces its positioning around intentionality and everyday utility. The pouch aligns with the brand’s minimalist aesthetic, mirroring their neutral colour palette and minimalist design across its products and digital platforms. The inclusion of the pouch also encourages ongoing brand visibility, as it is designed for repeated use beyond the initial purchase, subtly integrating MERIT into consumers’ daily routines.
Don’t Overthink It
Among those open to considering the brand, 50% describe MERIT as “a unique brand,” significantly outperforming the competitor average of 40%. Clean credentials are also strong, with 37% associating MERIT with being “a clean brand,” compared to ~30% for competitors. This supports their founding mission of being simple, clean and minimalistic.
Perceived value reinforces its premium positioning: 34% believe MERIT is “worth paying more for,” tracking closely with Glossier and ahead of mass-market brands. Trust further differentiates the brand, with 42% of considerers saying MERIT is “a brand I trust,” outperforming several larger competitors.
These results are not accidental. MERIT’s restraint, across shade ranges, product launches, packaging, and messaging, is being interpreted as intentional quality rather than limitation.
In a category addicted to excess, MERIT’s discipline reads as confidence.
What Marketers Can Learn:
White Space Strategy
MERIT shows the power of identifying an underserved audience within a saturated market. By targeting a cross-generational consumer, the brand avoided trend-chasing and built broad, lasting appeal.
Clear Brand Point of View
A strong, consistent philosophy of minimalism and ‘less is more’ is present through MERIT’s products, design, and messaging. Marketers can learn that restraint and clarity can be more differentiating than excess.
Cultural Storytelling
By drawing inspiration from fashion and design rather than beauty trends, MERIT positions itself as timeless. This highlights the value of looking beyond your category to build stronger brand equity. MERIT cleverly credits their inspiration with intention.
Intentional Touchpoints
From selective partnerships to utility-driven packaging, MERIT proves that thoughtful, real-world experiences deepen loyalty and extend brand presence beyond digital platforms.
MERIT Beauty’s success demonstrates that in a saturated market, differentiation does not have to be loud to be effective. Instead of chasing trends or over-serving a single demographic, MERIT identified a genuine white space and built a brand rooted in restraint, intentionality, and cultural relevance.
For a minimalist brand, however, restraint only works if it is protected. This is where always-on brand tracking becomes essential. As awareness grows, small shifts in perception carry outsized impact. Continuous measurement allows MERIT to ensure that core associations like “clean,” “simple,” and “premium” remain intact, and to identify early signs of dilution before they appear in sales performance.
More importantly, ongoing tracking gives marketers clarity on what to keep doing. It reveals which partnerships strengthen brand meaning, which cultural signals resonate over time, and how preference is formed beyond product launches. Rather than reacting to short-term noise, MERIT can confidently double down on what reinforces its point of view.
For marketers, the lesson is clear: winning today’s consumer is not about doing more, but about doing less, and measuring it well. Brands that lead with clarity of purpose, cohesive storytelling, and intentional touchpoints can build lasting loyalty. With always-on brand tracking, that restraint becomes a defensible strategy, one backed by data, not instinct.
Less is working. And now MERIT is the proof.
Data discussed in this article has been provided by Tracksuit, the affordable, always-on brand tracker built for marketers and agencies. They’re now tracking in 25 markets (and growing), giving you consistent brand health data everywhere you operate.
The team has put together a quick video on how you can use the dashboard to track your brand performance over time and prove the impact of your marketing strategy.
"the value of looking beyond your category to build stronger brand equity" -- one of the most important points in PR + marketing!
I think there's been a lot of great brand partnerships over the last few years that exemplify this strategy/way of thinking, but there's still a long way to go in terms of marketers (on the client/in-house side, imho) stepping outside their bubbles and into a customer's shoes.
It's why PR (me) is often forced to (if smart) stay in-the-know on as much as possible in every category. You never know where your next great idea or inspiration will come from -- and insights often arrive at that unexpected intersection. ~
What’s interesting is that MERIT’s minimalism is doing real commercial work.
Fewer SKUs. Clear heroes. A five-minute routine.
That restraint makes their paid advertising smarter too. When you have clear heroes, you can truly scale moments like Black Friday, where Flush Balm became one of the top three SKUs on Shopify (which is pretty insane).
In a category addicted to more, MERIT is competing primarily on clarity. And that’s hard to copy.