Project Overview
- Brand: Cellmetics Beauty
- Role: Product Owner & CEO — Brand, Product & Growth
- Brief: Commissioned by one of Lithuania's largest ecommerce companies to build a makeup brand for mature women from scratch
- Stage: Zero-to-One → Rapid Scale
- Market: US DTC Beauty
$1M+ Revenue in 8 months · $300K Monthly ad spend · 100+ SKUs launched · 4 months Zero to fully operational
Context
Mature women represent one of the most underserved demographics in the beauty industry — a gap that Kiloverse, one of Lithuania's largest ecommerce companies, identified as a significant market opportunity.
The concept was clear: a makeup brand designed specifically for women 45 and older, built for the US DTC market. What didn't exist yet was everything required to bring it to life — brand identity, product portfolio, supplier network, ecommerce infrastructure, or a team to execute it.
Kiloverse brought me in with full ownership over execution. The directive was straightforward: build it properly and get it to market fast.
Four months later, Cellmetics Beauty was operational — brand defined, product portfolio sourced and packaged, Shopify store live, team assembled, and acquisition systems ready to scale.
The Challenge
Speed was the primary constraint — but speed without structure creates chaos.
Product development, brand positioning, supplier negotiations, packaging, and digital infrastructure all had to move in parallel, with no room to sequence them neatly. At the same time, there was no existing audience, no acquisition system, and no proven channel to build from. The growth engine had to be designed and ready to scale from day one — because in DTC, a slow start is an expensive one.
The challenge wasn't any single workstream. It was keeping all of them moving at once, without letting speed compromise quality.
Role & Ownership
I owned this end-to-end — brought in by Kiloverse to turn their concept into a real, operating business, with full responsibility for every decision between idea and launch.
That meant leading simultaneously across brand positioning, product portfolio, supplier sourcing, packaging, Shopify infrastructure, acquisition strategy, and team assembly. No handover points, no specialist leads to defer to. Every workstream was mine to drive.
The result was a fully operational DTC brand, live in market within four months.
Ingrida's Key Leadership Areas
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Brand Concept & Positioning
Defined the brand’s value proposition, target audience, and visual direction to position Cellmetics as a makeup brand designed specifically for mature women.
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Product Portfolio Development
Designed the initial product assortment and structured a scalable makeup portfolio, enabling the brand to launch with a complete offering across key categories.
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Supplier Sourcing & Negotiations
Identified and evaluated ~25 manufacturers, selecting partners capable of delivering private-label products with low MOQs to support rapid and capital-efficient launch.
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Packaging & Product Design
Directed packaging development and product presentation to ensure a consistent brand identity across the full portfolio.
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Shopify Ecosystem Setup
Built the eCommerce infrastructure on Shopify, including product architecture, storefront setup, and integrations required for scalable online operations.
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Growth & Acquisition Strategy
Defined the customer acquisition approach, identifying priority channels and establishing the strategic framework for early-stage growth.
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Paid Media
Launched and structured performance marketing systems across key platforms, enabling scalable paid acquisition and continuous testing.
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Team & Hiring
Built and coordinated a hybrid team of in-house specialists, freelancers, and external agencies to execute brand launch and growth initiatives.
Core Strategic Decisions
A selection of the core decisions that shaped the brand’s positioning, growth, and long-term direction.
Understanding the Audience
Building for an underserved audience requires more than demographic research — it requires understanding how that audience actually thinks, shops, and feels about the brands already trying to reach them.
Before a single product was selected, significant time was invested in primary research — reviews, community forums, and content where women 50+ described their experiences in their own words. The finding was consistent: they weren't asking to look younger. They wanted products that worked for their skin and a brand that spoke to them with relevance, not condescension.
That insight shaped every decision — product selection, visual identity, photography, and tone.
The market confirmed it within the first month: repeat purchase rates hit 14%, before any email strategy was in place.
Low-MOQ Supplier Strategy
Launching a 100+ SKU makeup brand requires significant inventory investment — unless you build the supplier strategy around that constraint from the start.
Rather than committing to large minimum order quantities before the market had validated anything, I evaluated approximately 25 manufacturers and selected partners capable of delivering private-label products with low MOQs. That decision allowed the brand to launch with a 14–15 product portfolio — enough range to feel like a complete brand, without the capital exposure of a full inventory commitment upfront.
Quality and customization weren't sacrificed for speed. All three had to work together.
Impact: Entered the market within four months with a credible product portfolio, minimal inventory risk, and supplier relationships structured to scale as demand grew.
Brand Identity Definition
Most brands targeting mature women position around age rather than aspiration — leading with "anti-aging" instead of confidence, quality, and relevance.
Cellmetics was built differently. The positioning, visual identity, and aesthetic direction were defined around how this audience actually wants to feel. That foundation informed everything downstream — packaging, website, campaign creative, and marketing communication from day one.
Getting brand identity right at the start isn't a creative exercise. It's a commercial one — because retrofitting positioning after launch is expensive and rarely works.
Impact: Launched with a cohesive, differentiated brand identity that resonated with a demographic most beauty brands had failed to speak to authentically.
Shopify E-commerce Infrastructure
Platform choice at launch determines how painful scaling becomes later.
Shopify was selected as the core platform and built out properly from the start — product architecture, storefront structure, bundling, upsells, email integrations, and everything required to support both conversion and growth. Not a quick setup to get live, but a foundation designed to handle volume from day one.
Impact: A scalable ecommerce infrastructure that supported $1M in revenue within eight months of launch — without needing to be rebuilt mid-growth.
Hybrid Team Assembly
A four-month launch timeline leaves no room for slow hiring decisions.
Rather than building a full in-house team from scratch — which would have taken longer than the entire launch window — I assembled a hybrid structure of in-house specialists, freelancers, and external agencies, matched to the specific needs of each workstream. The right people, in the right structure, for the speed required.
Coordination across that many moving parts simultaneously is where most launches break down. It didn't here.
Impact: A fully resourced, coordinated team delivered a complete brand launch in four months — on time and without compromising quality across any workstream.
Growth Engine
Revenue at this scale doesn't happen by accident — it requires acquisition infrastructure built to perform from day one.
From launch, I established the full customer acquisition system — performance marketing across Meta, Google, and AppLovin, email capture and retention flows, and a continuous creative testing process to identify what worked and scale it fast. Nothing was left to run on autopilot. Every channel was actively managed, tested, and optimised in real time.
The result was a paid acquisition engine that scaled from zero to approximately $300K in monthly ad spend — efficiently enough to support $1M in revenue within eight months.
Impact: Built a fully operational, multi-channel acquisition system that scaled rapidly without sacrificing efficiency — the commercial engine behind the $1M revenue milestone.
Outcomes & Results
The project progressed from zero to a fully operational DTC beauty brand in four months and achieved $1M revenue within eight months.
Rapid Zero-to-Market Launch
In four months, a blank brief became a complete operating business — brand identity, product portfolio, supplier network, packaging, Shopify store, and operational infrastructure. All built simultaneously, all ready at launch.
$1M Revenue in 8 Months
Cellmetics Beauty reached $1M in revenue within its first eight months of operation in the US market. For a brand that didn't exist a year earlier, with no existing audience and no inherited infrastructure, that trajectory reflected both the strength of the market opportunity and the execution behind it
Scalable Paid Acquisition System
Paid acquisition was built and scaled methodically — starting at approximately $4K monthly on Meta, then expanding to Google, and later AppLovin. AppLovin, typically associated with mobile gaming rather than beauty, proved to be the highest-performing channel — a non-obvious bet that significantly accelerated acquisition efficiency.
Each platform was tested, optimised, and scaled only when the economics justified it. The result was a multi-channel acquisition system that reached approximately $300K in monthly ad spend — efficiently enough to support $1M in revenue within eight months.
Customer Validation
The strongest signal that the brand had found its audience wasn't the revenue number — it was how customers behaved after the first purchase.
Within the first month, repeat purchase rates reached 14% — with no meaningful email strategy in place yet. That number grew to above 20% as retention systems matured. Return rates stayed below 1%, reflecting both product quality and the accuracy of the initial sourcing decisions.
Customers left detailed reviews on the website and Trustpilot — unprompted, describing how the brand understood them in ways others hadn't. For a brand that didn't exist eight months earlier, that level of loyalty was the clearest possible confirmation that the market research, product selection, and brand positioning had all landed correctly.
