The Interview: Jake Xu, Co-founder, Shakeup Cosmetics on building a beauty brand for men

Jake Xu is Co-founder of Shakeup Cosmetics, the skincare brand designed with men's skin at front of mind. Jake and brother Shane, who previously ran a marketing agency, established the brand at the height of the pandemic but found early success when the brand was picked up by Harvey Nichols. It now counts Boots and Amazon among its stockists and has a big business in Asia. 

Jake Xu talks to us about what inspired him and his brother to launch the brand, how they built it during a global crisis, why it was so important to design the product with men's skin in mind and what his ambitions are for the future.

Please tell us a bit about your background before you co-founded Shakeup with your brother, Shane.

Before Shakeup, Shane and I founded and ran a creative marketing agency for 12 years. We built it from a two-men band to an award-winning boutique agency serving many cosmetic and beauty clients such as Soap & Glory, No7, Molton Brown, Burt’s Bees and Dermalogica, just to name a few. We also had clients outside of beauty such as NBC Universal and Quidco. We learnt a lot from these businesses especially the beauty brands, where we witnessed the power when you combine an authentic brand story with efficacious and quality products.

When did the idea spark in you that it would be a great idea to launch a cosmetics brand for men?

Since we were teenagers, we had suffered from Rosacea and skin breakouts. We started dabbling with skincare and makeup to keep the flare-ups under control or to conceal the redness when nothing else helped. It impacted on our confidence a lot, and over the years we had found an assortment of products we could rely on, but it wasn’t without lots of trial or error. We were frustrated by the lack of help or information when it came to skincare for men, even less education available when it came to makeup products for men. So the seed was sawn then to create a brand that would fix that, to help guys who are just like ourselves navigate the skincare maze. It remained an ‘idea’ for a couple of years until 2018 when we finally started working on the brand and found a manufacturer to start formulating our launch range of products.

You pretty much launched your business before you even had your product, tell us the story of how you got Shakeup off the ground.

We had the great fortune to be introduced to the British Beauty Council, and consequently entered their Next British Beauty Brand competition in 2019, even though at this point we had only just received our prototype. To our delight, we won one of the top three spots. By chance, the beauty buyer at Harvey Nichols was one of the judges, and she reached out to us after the competition and offered us a full store listing as well as online. So in November that year, as soon as we received our inventory, we were listed in 9 Harvey Nichols stores nationwide. For any indie brand to get a major retail listing is a huge milestone, let alone a listing with one of Britain’s best loved shopping destinations, so we were very chuffed. It also fitted perfectly with our omni-channel strategy for the brand. You see, we didn’t set out to create an online-only D2C brand, because we operate in such a niche category, the only way to democratise and normalise men’s beauty is to be seen on high street and in retail space. This strategy continued to serve us well, as we saw D2C brand’s acquisition costs skyrocketed over the next few years over the pandemic.

Why was it important for men to have a dedicated range, rather than, say, going down the gender-neutral route, which so many new launches take these days?

There are a few reasons for that. First of all, even though we hope and believe that in the future, beauty will have no gender, the reality is that our skin does. Men’s skin is physiologically different to women’s skin:- Our skin is 20-25% thicker, we have bigger pores and more of them, our skin produces more sebum so more men suffer from oily skin than women, and furthermore, men shave more often so the top layer of our skin gets more damaged and it reacts quicker to outside stress. When you take all of these into account, we don’t believe you can have one product that is suitable for both genders as well as all skin types.

Secondly, we weren’t convinced that the consumers are ready for a gender neutral brand, just yet. We looked at the google search terms in our research and found that very few people would search for ‘gender neutral skincare’ or ‘genderless makeup’, whereas terms such as ‘makeup for men’ or ‘skincare for men’ were much more commonly searched. This showed us that the ideal of gender neutrality in beauty isn’t necessarily supported by the demand from consumers. We believe when you try to be everything for everyone, you actually end up marketing to no one specific. Our approach is to bring more men into the beauty conversations, and deliver the idea that skincare is self-care, and we have got products that are developed, tested and designed specifically for men.

How did you go about setting up the business in the midst of the Covid crisis?

In our career we had learnt that in every crisis there are opportunities. Having said that, when we launched Shakeup, we had no idea that the world was about to shut down for a few years! People ask us how Covid had affected our business, we would say ‘how would I know?’ because we launched the brand right at the beginning of the pandemic, we had nothing to compare with. We had to pivot, but one of the key advantages for being a start-up business is that we can be agile and flexible. When the world zigs, you zag. We reviewed our plan and changed it to suit the new norm. We brought forward our international expansion plan and went wherever Covid wasn’t basically. By launching into and succeeding in different international markets, our business not only survived, but thrived during the past 4 years.

Shakeup was launched and built during the pandemic

At what point was it clear to you that you had a hit on your hands?

Without a doubt it was the launch in China. We opened our flagship e-store on Tmall – China’s largest Ecomm platform, in July 2020. And by November, we were one of the top 10 fastest growing British brands on the platform and doing £100,000+ sales a month.

You’ve picked up some incredible retail partners, how did you do that?

Patiently. Ha! Retail listings always take longer than you think or plan for, but at the end of the day, the buyers are looking for newness and commercially viable brands/products to bring incremental sales. If your brand fits the bill and the products are solid, you will likely get a chance. It’s a game of match though. Be clear and confident in your brand positioning and where you are best suited in the market. Not all retailers are right for your brand and vice versa. Have a hitlist, then network hard to find a way to reach out to them. If the fit is there, you will get a meeting. Be prepared, as you will hear more no’s than yes’s at the beginning. But to quote IT cosmetics’ founder Jamie Kern Lima, “Sometimes ‘no’ is just 'not yet'…”

Tell us about your customer. In the UK at least you appear to be targeting a millennial and up customer, which makes a change from the typical Gen Z focus.

We have found that our brand resonates more with Millennial and Gen X in the west. And we even have a significant portion of our customers in the age group of 50+. There is no doubt that Gen Z is pushing the boundary of gender fluidity as well as the social zeitgeist. But perhaps due to our brand positioning, and our price points, we find our customers to be slightly older in the UK, Europe and Australia. In Asia however, they are much younger. You will often find this when trading internationally, and your marketing strategy much be localised to each market in order to engage effectively with your consumers where they are.

How have you built your community and how do you go about maintaining engagement?

We host focus group with our customers regularly. We involve our community during product development, even product naming! It’s crucial for us to launch products that our customers need or sometimes even have been asking for. We are also being selective in terms of content creators we work with, and indeed the social channels we focus on with our output. For example, TikTok is a great tool for brand building and mobile commerce… for some brands! Even though some of our customers are consuming content on this platform, but do they relate to the skincare content created by teenagers on this app? Perhaps not. Would they impulse-purchase products in our price range? Unlikely. Whereas we find Facebook and Instagram to be much more effective in communicating with our demographic. For indie brands, your resources are finite and cash is always tight, so pick your battle and focus on where you get faster results and do more what sells.

Age DEF-EYE, the new bestseller

What are the key products in the range that men come back for time and again?

Our BB tinted moisturiser – LET’S FACE IT, and AGE DEF-EYE, our Instant Lifting eye cream.

You are skincare-led but you do have products that provide coverage, how well do these perform from a sales perspective and have you found men are now comfortable going in-store and buying these products?

Before our instant lifting eye cream was launched, our BB tinted moisturiser was the best selling SKU globally. Of course it varies from territory to territory, for example in China, our BB cream sells 1 every 4 minutes, it’s our best seller there by a country mile. However in Nordic, the retailers are a little more cautious when taking on this SKU. With our skincare-first approach, we do make sure that even our colour products are skincare/makeup hybrids. Take this BB cream for example, it has 24hr moisturisation, SPF25, Hyaluronic Acid and Vitamin E. We made sure its base formula is a fantastic moisturiser in itself, before we added in the pigments so that it also delivers the instant gratification that you’d get from a cosmetic product.

You recently launched an eye-cream that took off really quickly, what makes it so special?

Yes, this is AGE DEF-EYE instant lifting eye cream. It took us 2 years to develop and the whole team are so proud of this amazing launch. We never launch anything that we are not 100% in love with anyway, but with this product, we struck gold with our chemists team and our manufacturer. We found some super innovative and efficacious ingredients that not only deliver the results we wanted, but also avoided the negative downsides in other similar products on the market. We knew we had something special, and it was also proven by rigorous clinical trial and tests we carried out too. It really is a miracle product.

How do you approach NPD? And what are your aims for expanding the range?

We have a list of criteria for any NPD, and it always starts with extensive market research. We identify gaps in our product range, and once we have found this gap, we then determine if there’s a market in this gap. Is there a genuine need from our consumers for such product. If so, what do people like about similar products already on the market and where improvements can be made. You’d have noticed that we have a tight range of multi-functional SKUs in our portfolio, even though new-ness is important, we don’t like to launch products for the sake of launching new products.

What are your main ambitions for the brand moving forward?

I feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface. Men’s category is finally taking off and we have the first mover advantage in multiple markets. It’s time to scale and build on our success and make “Shakeup” synonymous with men’s skincare, globally.

Do you have advice for others who are looking to create and grow a brand as you have done?

Focus, and stay in your lane. It’s easy to get distracted by what and how others are doing. I know. Then imposter syndrome kicks in, you doubt your ability, and you doubt your every decision. My advice is, don’t. Don’t compare your progress to others. You are exactly where you are supposed to be in your own timeline. Have your sight firmly on the end goal, but focus on day by day. Whatever the task at hand now, focus on that, and do that well. Enjoy the ride, the learning, the rollercoaster, the highs and the lows, but always remember why you set up the brand in the first place.