The Interview: Adam Minto, Founder & CEO of Revolution Beauty

Revolution Beauty, co-founded by Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth in 2015, is powered by its mission to offer products with the latest ingredients, technology and formulations at an affordable price.

Known for its Makeup Revolution brand, along with skincare, bodycare and haircare categories, Revolution Beauty is stocked across a number of leading UK retailers including Boots, Superdrug, Beauty Bay, ASOS and its own website.

In this interview with TheIndustry.fashion, Adam Minto speaks about Revolution Beauty's growth, achievements and what makes the brand successful. Along with some of its most popular products.

What is your career background?

Prior to founding Revolution Beauty, I spent over 30 years creating and supplying products for the beauty industry. Throughout my career, I have been lucky to work for some of the world’s biggest beauty brands including Revlon, Rimmel, Max Factor, MAC and Urban Decay, doing everything from supply, design and manufacturing.

Why did you launch Revolution Beauty?

Eight years ago I realised that the beauty industry was controlled by a few major goliaths who proliferated an unattainable beauty standard.  I co-founded Revolution Beauty in 2014, with a focus on making high-quality, innovative and cruelty free cosmetics affordable for all. Since then, we have challenged the idea that paying more for a product means better quality. We have also ensured our product ranges are diverse – from the shades we provide, to the influencers we use to showcase our products. This has clearly resonated with consumers as we are now on track to become the number one brand for affordable beauty globally.

How do you feel about the brand’s growth since launching?

Last year’s IPO was a real moment to look back and take stock of everything we have achieved at Revolution. In less than 10 years we have grown to sell beauty and skincare products in more than 15,000 outlets with retailers across 64 countries. As a business we are ideally placed to capitalise on changing consumer trends within a hugely attractive beauty market. This is just the start and we are confident in our long-term sustainable growth prospects.

What are some of the brand’s highlights? What are you most proud of?

I’m proud of the work Revolution Beauty is doing to help the next generation of consumers establish a new relationship with beauty. One that is healthier, happier, more expressive and more inclusive than ever before.

We’ve changed the game when it comes to leveraging social media and influencers and are now one of the top three consumer brands on TikTok and the biggest beauty brand in Europe across social media. It’s important to me that we never use any filters or retouch images on social media – what you see is what you get. We’ve also challenged the industry when it comes to innovation and products. We can take a trend and create a new product within 16 weeks, when you compare this to other competitors who take 18 months to get something from start to finish.

What is it about the brand that you think makes it successful?

What marks Revolution Beauty as different from other beauty brands is its ability to identify early trends in the market through its influencer, consumer and retailer channels. A combination of our direct consumer feedback, the close following of trends and our manufacturing strategy ensures we can deliver real speed to market with new products on shelves and online within 16 weeks. Not only that, but we also invest in innovative marketing strategies designed to appeal to a wider audience and offer products combining quality, inclusivity, innovation and affordability. I think Revolution has really connected with people because it represents the non-standard beauty standard.

Revolution Beauty spans across multiple beauty categories, was this always the plan for the brand?

Yes absolutely. When I started Revolution, I felt that there was a gap in the market for how brands responded to consumer demand for new products. At Revolution, we are able to innovate quickly and keep growing our product offering, giving consumers the chance to buy the best and most relevant beauty products around, whether that’s makeup, skincare, haircare or bodycare.

This is just the beginning - we have more exciting launches to come across the industry.

What is the brand’s most popular product category? Why do you think this is?

This is like asking me to pick my favourite child! It is almost impossible to pick just one although people have gone crazy for our Plex range. Haircare went viral over the pandemic, with people starting to think about it in the way they could go back to basics. Plex has been formulated to strengthen damaged hair from within, an innovative approach to repairing hair that has been damaged from too much heat or bleach. We’ve also just launched a new dermatologist-approved ceramide range which I think is going to quickly grow its fanbase, with people increasingly aware of the importance of maintaining their skin barrier.

Our foundations are also a fan favourite, the Pro CC Perfecting Skin Tint helps you get that ‘no-makeup makeup look’ that everyone is loving at the moment. We will soon be launching the IRL (In Real Life) Foundation which is all about showing your true, natural beauty - without the filter. It has a 16hr wear to help your feel as confident as possible.

Makeup Revolution has recently expanded to Boots. Why did you decide to do this? How do you feel about the expansion?

We have already had our Revolution Skincare and Haircare collections stocked at Boots since 2019, so it’s really exciting that we have been able to continue our relationship and category expansion with Boots. Makeup Revolution is a great fit for Boots with beauty fans already recognising it as a destination to try and buy new products and keep on top of the latest trends.

Last year, Revolution Beauty acquired Medichem Manufacturing to create an in-house manufacturing business. What has this done for the brand?

Medichem enables us to bring in-house important manufacturing capabilities, adding to our flexibility and agility to adapt our offer, ensuring that we keep producing the best and most relevant beauty products for our customers.

With sustainability becoming more prominent in the beauty industry, what is Revolution Beauty doing to be more responsible?

Sustainability is something that our customers are telling us they care about, including how and where their products are made. All of Revolution Beauty’s brands offer transparency around ingredients and we have a long heritage of being a 100% vegan, cruelty-free brand, with all our products approved by PETA as Animal Test Free.

For us, it’s more about progression, not perfection which is why we use our Planet Revolution line as a testbed to fast-track new findings and use these learnings throughout our business. Planet Revolution offers clean formulations and conscious packaging, made from sustainable and upcycled ingredients where possible.

What are your ambitions for the brand going forward?

I am hugely excited about the future of the brand and my goal is for us to be recognised as the high-growth disruptive start-up that we are.

This year we’ve already begun to grow our retail footprint, rolling out into over 2,800 Walgreens' stores in the US and launching our Makeup Revolution line into Boots. Over the next year, I hope to see us continue along these lines. Online also continues to be a key channel for us, having grown sales on our direct-to-consumer website by 50% year-on-year for the month of December and I look forward to building this momentum.