Milani Cosmetics grew sales 6% in 2025 and the brand has already started 2026 with a new marketing push.

The mass cosmetics brand prides itself on developing luxury-quality products for all skin tones at mass cosmetics prices, said Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Lowenstein. And that’s the theme of its new campaign, “What’s Inside Is Everything.”

“We wanted to take our brand purpose and really bring that back to the forefront of the conversation, which was really recognizing that Milani does things differently,” Lowenstein said. He references the brand’s “prestige formulas,” the products’ ingredients and where it develops the products as differentiating factors.

“We develop with purpose because we believe what’s inside the product is beyond what just sits on the top of it,” he said. “We also believe that what’s inside the consumer is also exceptional.”

‘Affordable’ Luxury

The new campaign highlights these differentiating factors. Milani Cosmetics is 25 years old, but has had several pushes over the years to refresh its brand and marketing efforts. This new campaign is Milani 3.0, Lowenstein said. The brand ended 2025 growing sales for the 17th consecutive quarter, and it surpassed $200 million in annual sales. Plus, it secured the seventh spot as the largest mass beauty brand up from No. 8, Lowenstein said. But it was ready for more.

“Our goal is to really redefine the mass beauty category, which is what we have set our ambitions on for the past few years,” he said. “We want to be the brand that is elevating and setting the new standard for mass beauty. There is this stigma for a long time of ‘You get what you pay for.’ Well, I kind of want to flip that on its head. And yeah, you do get what you pay for. You don’t have to spend $35 or $48 for a baked blush when you can spend $13 for the same quality performance and pigment at mass level.”

While Milani does pride itself on affordability, it has raised its prices over the past few years because of the macro factors impacting most businesses including inflation and tariffs. The brand does benchmark itself with competitors and Lowenstein said its prices are in-line.

“We’re at the sweet spot of where we know we need to be,” Lowenstein said, not sharing how much prices have increased. “And if prices were impacting us, we wouldn’t see the growth that we’re seeing.”

Milani Adds Skincare to Its Blush

Milani decided to take one of its more popular products — a blush that it has sold for 15 years —and reformulate it with skincare ingredients. That product did not have slowing sales, but the brand had an opportunity to infuse it with skin-nourishing ingredients, Lowenstein said. It added olive fruit extract and grape leaf extract to the blush.

It ensured that the new blush performed to the same level or better than the original formula by doing a blind test with current customers, he said. In addition, the new formula works on a broader range of skin tones than the previous one, Lowenstein said.

The brand also updated the packaging so consumers could see more of the blush cake color through the clear plastic. Packaging is especially important in mass beauty in stores as there are no testers at drug stores and mass merchants. Milani is sold in 25,000 retail stores, so in-store packaging plays a large role in its marketing.

“There still has to be this eye candy of how do you pull them into the shelf,” Lowenstein said.

Measuring the Campaign

The in-store displays are resetting now, which includes graphics that highlight the new formula. Milani debuted the marketing campaign “What’s Inside Is Everything” at the start of February, and it will run for a minimum of two years. The creative will feature different products throughout the campaign and showcase each product’s ingredients, where the product is made and the product’s craftsmanship. It currently has no plans to reformulate other products.

“There needs to be a reason and a why to do it,” Lowenstein said about any reformulating.

Milani will measure the success of the campaign through sales and brand health metrics, such as brand awareness and the attributes that consumers associate with the brand.