The influencers fueling the mass beauty comeback

Shelby Ann Bell is from Wagner, South Carolina — population: less than 600. When she started creating content in 2021, using mass products wasn’t solely a matter of affordability, but also of access. There was a grocery store and a Dollar General in her town, but no other retailers. That was where she first became interested in beauty.

By the time Bell began to create content, she’d relocated to Aiken, South Carolina. At the time, she was working as a third-grade teacher and professional makeup artist. “I was trying out [products] that were affordable and accessible, because I wasn’t close to a Sephora or an Ulta — the closest one was over an hour away, so I was buying stuff in CVS and Walmart to review and talk about. That’s really where my passion for affordable and drugstore makeup came from,” she said.

As she grew a following, she began trying a wider range of products, but then, last April, she posted an all-drugstore makeup routine that went viral. To date, it has 11 million views. “That kind of [reignited] my love for drugstore [products] and affordable makeup,” Bell said, noting that after that she decided to focus entirely on mass-market products. Favorite brands include affordable options like Hard Candy, which is exclusive to Walmart, Essence Cosmetics, also sold at Walmart and CVS, and Morphe, available at Target and Ulta Beauty.

Bell’s success comes as mass beauty is experiencing renewed momentum. According to Circana data released in May, mass beauty sales rose 7% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 to $18.1 billion. In Circana’s press release, Larissa Jensen, its svp and global beauty industry advisor, noted that, “Mass and prestige beauty are growing at nearly the same rate for the first time in five years.” Previously, prestige beauty had vastly outpaced mass-market growth.

Makeup was the slowest-growing beauty category across both prestige and mass channels in the first quarter, though lip treatments, lip liners, blushes and bronzers were bright spots. Skin care continued to post steady gains, with nearly all subcategories growing in both dollar and unit sales.

But creators like Bell, who now has 2.3 million TikTok followers and 230,000 Instagram followers, suggest another shift may be underway: Affordable beauty is no longer solely a budget alternative to prestige; increasingly, it is becoming a category consumers actively seek out for products they’ve been influenced to buy online and are genuinely excited to use.

In 2023, Kristyn Hoffman was attending esthetician school in Las Vegas, where she had been a dancer prior to the pandemic. “I just remember being in school, and everybody was talking about all these prestige brands or all these medspa brands, and I was like, ‘How are you guys affording these products right now?’” she said.

At the time, Hoffman said, most of the beauty conversation on TikTok centered on Sephora brands. She began posting about more affordable brands, like Byoma, Cocokind and Naturium, all of which are available at Target. “[It felt like] on TikTok, at that time, was very much content about brands carried at Sephora — that was what everybody was talking about. So, when I got on there and talked about [affordable brands], people were really excited,” Hoffman said. As she educated consumers about the products she loved, she said she felt she was helping dismantle the perception that lower-priced products are inherently less effective. Today, she has 448,000 TikTok followers and 72,000 Instagram followers.

While legacy mass brands like Neutrogena, L’Oréal, Maybelline and CeraVe continue to receive plenty of attention online, a newer generation of affordable beauty brands is also gaining traction — and shelf space — at Walmart, Target, CVS and Ulta Beauty. “I feel like affordable, accessible makeup is really having a comeback — people are super excited about it again,” Bell said.

Hoffman attributes that shift to two factors. First, the products themselves have improved. “The innovation with affordable skin care has gotten really exciting,” she said, pointing to products like Byoma’s $17 peel-off Bio-Collagen Radiance Facial Mask. Second, creators and experts are increasingly educating consumers about formulations and ingredients.

Cosmetic chemistry creators like Alex Padgett (@alexeducatedmess), Jane Tsui (@janethechemist) and Ramón Pagán (@glowbyramon) have also helped consumers understand that the differences between prestige and mass products are often smaller than they may assume.

For mass brands, creators like Bell and Hoffman represent an important opportunity to work with genuine fans of their products. “I look to work with creators who predominantly feature affordable beauty products — that could be drugstore, that could be from elsewhere. But we’re a Walmart-exclusive brand, and our core consumer is a Walmart shopper,” said Dena Silver, director of influencer and PR at Hard Candy. “I almost have a mental check — if they’re posting about [brands like Rhode and Saie], it’s not to say that those creators aren’t great, they’re just not a great fit for our brand,” Silver said, explaining her vetting process.

For creators like Bell and Hoffman, affordability isn’t a content hook but simply how they approach beauty. As a result, they are more likely to talk about products in terms of performance rather than price — an important distinction for Hard Candy, even though its products range from $4-$15, with most priced around $7. These creators have credibility in the mass space, Silver noted. “It’s not just, ‘This is an affordable product.’ It’s: ‘This is a great product, and it happens to be affordable.’ And if they hit that tone, then it works for us,” she said. The brand also aims to work with creators who already use its products and are authentic fans.

“The way that we think about it is: How can we make our category aspirational? We’re not trying to be aspirational as a whole because it just isn’t a fit for our brand. There still has to be that certain feeling of: I can look at this creator’s life, and it feels like something I would want to experience. [They have an] aspirational life, but it’s not going to be someone in Beverly Hills who’s living in a huge mansion and driving a Bentley,” she said.

Week in review

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