Milani doubled to $250m holding three price points and one customer. Most brands fragment instead. Glossy reported on 10 September that Milani Cosmetics has doubled annual sales to $250m in five years, delivered twenty consecutive quarters of category-beating growth, and moved from tenth to seventh in mass colour cosmetics. Its CEO describes a business built on three price points and a specific customer defined down to an age. For a founder, the discipline is the transferable part, and it is the opposite of what most ranges do as they grow. Beauty 2.0 Founder - 20 years in the beauty industry Key takeaway * In brief - Glossy reported on 10 September 2026 that Milani Cosmetics, under CEO Mary van Praag, has doubled annual sales to $250m over five years and is targeting $500m within three years. The reporting cites twenty consecutive quarters of category-beating growth, more than 10% sales growth in 2025, and a move from tenth to seventh position in mass colour cosmetics for a brand that has been trading for 25 years. Key SKUs sit at $12.99, $13.99 and $14.99, and the core customer is described as a defined persona aged 37. The combination worth studying is narrow price architecture plus a specific customer, held consistently over a long period, in a category where the usual response to pressure is to widen the range. * Who this is for - Brand Founders * Main takeaway - Growth at this kind of consistency comes from holding a position rather than extending one. Three price points and one clearly described customer is a harder discipline than it sounds, because every quarter produces a reason to break it. * What to do next - List your SKUs by price. If you have more than four distinct price points, work out which of them you could remove without losing a customer you actually want. Then describe your core customer in one sentence specific enough that it excludes people. Glossy reported on 10 September 2026 that Milani Cosmetics has doubled annual sales to $250m in five years under chief executive Mary van Praag, and is targeting $500m within three. Source: https://www.glossy.co/beauty/mary-van-praag-doubled-milani-cosmetics-annual-sales-to-250-million-in-five-years-now-shes-ready-to-double-them-again/. The supporting figures are unusually specific for this kind of profile. Twenty consecutive quarters of category-beating growth. More than 10% sales growth in 2025. A move from tenth to seventh place in mass colour cosmetics. Key SKUs at $12.99, $13.99 and $14.99. A core customer described as a persona aged 37. The brand is 25 years old. Twenty consecutive quarters is five years without a bad one. In mass colour cosmetics, during a period that included a dupe economy, a TikTok Shop land grab and a private label surge, that is the number that should hold your attention rather than the $250m. What the three price points are doing. Three price points within two dollars of each other is not an accident and it is not a limitation. It is a decision about what the brand is on the shelf. A shopper standing in a mass beauty aisle is making a fast comparison across a wall of options. A brand occupying a tight price band is legible in that environment: it has a clear position relative to what sits above and below it, and the shopper does not have to work out what kind of brand it is before deciding whether to look. A brand spread across eight price points from $6 to $34 is making the shopper do that work, and in a twenty-second decision the work does not get done. It also makes the brand harder for the retailer to merchandise, because it does not sit cleanly anywhere in the ladder. The discipline is holding this over years, because every single quarter generates a reason to break it. A premium launch that would carry more margin. An opening price point to compete with private label. A limited edition at a higher price because the packaging costs more. Each is individually reasonable. Collectively they dissolve the position. Why the persona is specific enough to exclude people. The reported customer definition is a persona with a name and an age of 37. That level of specificity does something most brand positioning does not: it rules things out. A brand that says its customer is "anyone who loves beauty" has given its team no basis on which to reject anything. A brand that has a defined customer can look at a proposed product, a campaign, a creator partnership or a price and ask whether it is for her. That is the practical function of a persona. It is not a marketing document. It is a decision filter, and its value is entirely in what it prevents. Most founders at £500k to £5m have a persona in a deck somewhere that is too broad to reject anything. The test is simple: can you name a plausible beauty customer who is explicitly not your customer. If not, you have a description rather than a decision. The pattern this is the opposite of. What usually happens as a brand grows is range fragmentation, and it happens for good reasons which is why it is hard to resist. Customers ask for a product you do not make, so you make it. A retailer wants an exclusive at a different price, so you create one. Growth slows in the core, so you extend into an adjacent category. A competitor launches at a lower price, so you add an entry product. None of these is a mistake in isolation. The cumulative effect is a range that covers more price points, serves more customers, and stands for less. Rate of sale per SKU falls because attention is split. Compliance and inventory costs rise because there are more things to maintain. And the brand becomes harder to describe, which makes every future retail conversation harder than the last one. The alternative, which Milani appears to have run for five years, is to grow by taking more share of a defined position rather than by occupying more positions. That is slower-feeling and it compounds, which is what twenty consecutive quarters actually represents. What to do with this at a smaller scale. The useful version of this at £500k to £5m is not to copy the price points. It is to check whether you have a position at all. Three things to pull. Your SKUs sorted by price, which will usually reveal more distinct price points than you thought. Your rate of sale per SKU, which will usually reveal that a small number of products carry the range. And your first-order data by product, which tells you what strangers actually buy when they meet you. Then ask what you would remove. Not what you would discontinue tomorrow, but which products exist because someone asked rather than because they belong to the position. In most ranges that is between a quarter and a third of the SKUs, and they generally consume more attention than they return. The honest limitation. Milani is a 25-year-old mass brand with scale, retail relationships and a cost base that a small brand does not have. Twenty consecutive quarters of share gain is partly a function of being big enough to defend a position in the first place. What transfers is not the outcome. It is the mechanism, which is that the brand decided what it was for, expressed that decision in a narrow price architecture and a specific customer, and then declined the reasonable-sounding opportunities that would have blurred it. That decision is available at any size, and it is considerably cheaper to make at £1m than at $250m. Sophie Lansbury Founder of Beauty 2.0. Nearly 20 years in beauty - from counter to boardroom, indie launches to global houses. Writes about the operational reality of growing beauty brands. Was this helpful?

Milani CEO details strategies behind sustained growth. 2026-07-13 Milani has achieved 19 consecutive quarters of sales growth, with annual sales now nearing $250 million. A cornerstone of the color cosmetics brand's growth strategy is its deep collaboration with major retailers like Target, Walgreens, Ulta Beauty and CVS. CEO Mary van Praag describes a process of co-developing products 18 months in advance, aligning on category trends, and tailoring innovation to each retailer's customer base. These partnerships often lead to exclusive launches and expanded shelf space, strengthening Milani's presence across omnichannel retail. Full story: NRF SmartBrief News and trends about the U.S. Retail industry Designed specifically for retail professionals, NRF SmartBrief is a free, daily email newsletter. It provides the latest need-to-know news and industry information that maximizes your time, giving you an edge over your competition.