Shelley Sullivan has been one of Australia’s best-known beauty entrepreneurs for more than 20 years. The ModelCo founder has worked with global celebrity ambassadors such as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Hailey Bieber and collaborated with the late fashion legend, Karl Lagerfeld.
In 2016, Sullivan launched MCoBeauty, a diffusion brand which has become one of Australia’s leading luxe-for-less makeup brands. She also had the business nous to choose supermarkets as her bricks-and-mortar retail partners – the second biggest retailers of beauty products in Australia after pharmacies.
The brand gained further leverage earlier this year through a partnership with Celeste Barber. Within two weeks of the popular comedian sharing reviews of her favourite MCoBeauty products with her eight million social media followers, sales jumped 518 per cent at Woolworths and increased the brand’s online sales by 2000 per cent. A revenue surge of $4.5 million.
The business recorded its most successful financial results ever in FY21, achieving over 72 per cent year-on-year wholesale sales growth and increasing direct-to-consumer e-commerce sales by more than 927 per cent, adds Sullivan.
“MCoBeauty was the top-selling cosmetics brand in Woolworths throughout 2020 and 2021. Our number one selling product – XtendLash Mascara – continues to dominate the category as the most popular cosmetic product in Woolworths for the past 25 weeks straight, ahead of our global competitors including L’Oréal Paris, Rimmel London, Maybelline, Revlon and Covergirl.“
Over the years, major beauty brands such as Lancôme, Estee Lauder and Clinique have started out in skincare and built lucrative makeup businesses. But there hasn’t been as much traffic the other way.
Sullivan is again leading the way by launching MCoBeauty’s first skincare range. Like many of her ground-breaking releases, the six SKU lineup goes above and beyond for the money and is totally on-trend.
The regimen may be simple and easy-to-use, but the products are science-backed, naturally-based and incorporate some of today’s most in-demand active ingredients, including Kakadu plum, niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, salicylic acid and glycolic acid.
To date, the brand has kept price tags under $30, but two of the new skincare products – Hydrating Hyaluronic Acid & Vitamin C Serum and Hydrating Day & Night Face Moisturiser – are priced at $38 and $34, respectively.
The other four daily skincare essentials are: Double-Sided Facial Wipes ($12), Salicylic Foaming Face Cleaner ($22), Gentle Vitamin C Exfoliating Scrub ($29) and AHA/BHA Pore Refining Exfoliating Toner ($30).
The prestige-quality packaging stands out from the shelf in rose pink. Available from Woolworths and Big W stores and MCoBeauty.com, MCoBeauty’s new skincare range offers what today’s consumers want – top-performing, results-driven products at affordable price points that match their prestige counterparts.