How Topicals became Sephora's fastest-growing skincare brand with a waitlist

The waitlist that built a category

Topicals launched in 2020, founded by Olamide Olowe, with a simple premise: treat skin conditions like hyperpigmentation, eczema, and folliculitis, and destigmatize the conversation around them. Before the brand had a full line, it had an audience. That audience became a waitlist. The waitlist became a launch. And the launch became the fastest-growing skincare brand at Sephora.

The growth is not luck. It is a repeatable, creator-led playbook that any emerging fashion or beauty founder can study.

The numbers behind the momentum

The data points are worth sitting with. Sales tripled in 2021. The brand projected more than 600 percent growth in 2022. At Sephora, it sold one product every minute. A $10 million Series A from Cavu Consumer Partners followed, with funding earmarked for omnichannel expansion and brand marketing.

On the creator side, the signals are just as strong. Topicals generated $2.9 million in earned media value, a 68 percent quarter-on-quarter gain and a 124 percent year-on-year leap. It worked with 962 creators, an 86 percent quarter-on-quarter surge, and content volume spiked 135 percent to 2,100 posts. Crucially, most of that growth came from creators who had not mentioned the brand the previous quarter.

The playbook, broken down

1. Community before product

Topicals built an audience around the conversation, skin insecurity and representation, before it had a full range to sell. When the product arrived, demand was already waiting. For founders, the lesson is to build the audience and the narrative first. The product then lands into warmth, not cold.

2. Creators as the core channel, not the top-up

Many brands treat creators as an amplification layer on top of paid media. Topicals treated creators as the engine. The content was education-led and authentic, not polished and ad-like. The result was compounding earned media that paid spend cannot replicate at the same cost.

3. Niche as the wedge, not the ceiling

By owning one underserved concern first, Topicals built credibility that generalized into a full skincare category. Specificity is not a limit. It is the entry point that earns trust, and trust is what lets a brand expand without losing its edge.

4. Retail as acceleration, not foundation

Sephora amplified demand the community had already created. The brand did not rely on the shelf to generate interest. It brought its own demand to the shelf, and the shelf then scaled it.

What this means for fashion and beauty founders

The brands winning right now are not the loudest. They are the most specific and the most consistent. Creator-led community compounds. It is slower to start than paid media, but it builds something paid media cannot buy, a base of people who will advocate for the brand without being asked.

At Creator SEM, we track these creator-led growth patterns across the top 200 brands. We turn them into search and social playbooks for emerging fashion and beauty labels. If you are building a brand and want the same approach applied to your growth, we should talk.