Beautyblender CEO Rea Ann Silva has watched the rise of Beautyblender dupes for years, but last year marked a turning point. When she discovered that major retailers were buying dupes alongside her Beautyblenders, it became clear to her that the dupe culture wasn’t going anywhere.
Silva launched the Beautyblender in 2002, and by 2013, the $20 teardrop-shaped makeup sponges were sold nationwide at Sephora. Ten years later, in 2023, the global Beautyblender market was estimated at $820 million.
Over the years, Silva had seen a steady rise of dupes imitating the unique sponge on social media. When it began to affect the company’s mindset, he decided to do something about it. Silva refocused his messaging strategy on reminding people why Beautyblender is a category leader. He started allocating more budget to digital marketing, as a way to educate his customers and reach them where they already are.
Today, Silva says the efforts are bearing fruit. But dealer-owned dupes, often driven by employee incentives and special visual merchandising placements, remain a problem.
“What I see is the acceptance and democratization of dupes in general,” Silva said.
What are dupes?
Counterfeit products have been around forever, but the recent rise of “counterfeit”—which is relatively short—especially affects the beauty and fashion industries.
It’s not all bad news for established beauty products. According to Nielsen IQ’s 2023 report, instead of selling people’s food, the growing popularity of dupes has actually boosted the beauty industry as a whole, with both dupe products and fake products themselves seeing sales growth. While NIQ found that “duper” brands are growing fast, even “forgotten” beauty brands have seen growth in recent years, “showing that both brands can coexist in the category,” the report said.
While traditional dupes often carry a sense of shame, dupes have become something to celebrate, especially among Gen Z and millennials. Videos on TikTok with the hashtag “dupe” have reached nearly six billion views since July, with consumers and influencers bragging about finding the perfect “dupe” for a high-end product and sharing tips on how to get the same look or performance at a fraction of the cost.
According to Julie Zerbo, founder of Fashion Law, it is now “part of the culture” for dupes to broadly refer to both “off-the-shelf” products, as well as counterfeits and other infringing goods.
“We see a tendency to refer to products that are inspired by other products and do not use the copyrighted material of those products,” said Zerbo. “One thing we see is when products are duplicated with legally protected material. So really famous bags, just the shape of the bag alone, can be protected by trademark law. So if that is repeated, even without the brand name, that would be a violation of the law.”
Dupe culture is here to stay, Zerbo said. Consumers are motivated by rising prices, high-quality dupes and fakes, as well as increasing accessibility, thanks to the many fakes that are easily available on the Amazon market and the TikTok Store. He added that social media has played an important role in increasing the accessibility and cultural acceptance of fashion, where consumers celebrate and grow cheap online imitations of basic beauty and fashion products.
“Brands are also raising their prices so much, especially in recent years, that they’re either pricing out a lot of consumers, or making consumers feel bad about buying fake or counterfeit products,” said Zerbo. . “Many consumers, in my experience, see this price increase as not commensurate with the increase in quality.”
According to a 2023 study by Morning Consult, nearly one-third of all US adults have intentionally made a dupe purchase, with this number rising to nearly half of Gen Z consumers and 44% of millennials.
Products have seen. Beautyblender, Lululemon, and Olaplex, among other luxury brands, have all tried to cope with the rise in product manufacturing over the past year.
“People should know that not all things are the same,” said Silva. “There is a reason why one person is a creator of a category and another is a famous brand, another is a mass market, buy five in a bag.”
Silva is very frustrated with the way dupes are getting into his product. He points to the financial resources spent on developing the company’s products and materials, which are then chosen by actors who skip the creative process but use his design.
“I pay for marketing, I pay for art, I pay for staff, and I create assets, and they just copy and paste,” Silva said.
Beating the dupes at their own game
Silva created Beautyblender while she was a makeup department expert on the set of They are young womenthe first TV show to be broadcast and filmed in high definition.
The Beautyblender sponge was one of the first round sponges on the market. The name Beautyblender is trademarked, and the product contains appropriate polymers. Beautyblender doesn’t have a design patent, though not for lack of trying on Silva’s part (he re-patented it four times). This lack of copyright protection is one of the reasons why the market has seen an influx of dupes and similar products, as other brands are able to legally replicate the general shape and function of the Beautyblender.
Silva’s two main strategies to combat the counterfeit culture are to educate consumers about why her product is better, and to use an originator-centered marketing strategy, highlighting how she created the product and her beauty business journey.
This answer has appeared in a new campaign: Don’t be fooled. The campaign, which includes PR efforts such as interviews with journalists and social media engagement, seeks to educate consumers on why the Beautyblender is different from other versions on the market.
Silva says he stands out in the beauty tools category as the inventor who created the first product—the Beautyblender sponge—and built a name around it, unlike competitors like Real Techniques, Morphe, and Sigma, who simply add Beautyblender dupes to existing product lines without launching something fundamentally new.
“I feel like I’m starting from scratch, talking about the origins of Beautyblender,” said Silva about the campaign.
“Dupe Swap” by Lululemon
Yoga-inspired activewear Lululemon, known for its leggings, tapped into the dupe debate last year by hosting a “dupe swap.”
The brand invites consumers to trade in their knockoff Lululemon leggings for an authentic pair of the brand’s signature Match leggings. The goal was to embrace the conversation about dupes while educating consumers about what makes the product unique, according to Lululemon Chief Brand and Product Activation Officer Nikki Neuburger.
“It is a trend that we do not see that it will end soon. So we decided to lean in and accept it, rather than pretend it doesn’t exist,” said Neuburger. “We are 100% confident in the quality of our product, and we want consumers to understand why we charge a premium price point.”
A “dupe swap” event at the Los Angeles Century City Mall saw about 1,000 leggings swapped, with a line outside the store hours before it opened. About 50% of the attendees were new to the brand, and 50% were under the age of 30. A similar UCLA dupe exchange a few months later saw 75% of attendees as new to the product.
Neuburger says the company has seen dupe exchange events as a huge success in terms of communication and outreach, especially on TikTok, where it has sparked widespread buzz.
“In the end what we learned was: We don’t need to be afraid of this. We can be confident, we can be in the conversation,” said Neuburger. “I actually feel like it was culturally important for us to step in.” It also allowed us to present ourselves in a way that felt really engaging and accessible for people to be introduced to the brand for the first time. In the end, we did it in a traditional way, because it was shared.”
There have been no other cheat exchange events since then, and Neuburger has not said there are plans for any in the future.
Flattering or stealing?
While Neuburger sees the discussion surrounding Lululemon dupes as bolstering the brand’s reputation, Silva sees it as more of a concern, in part because of the differences in how the companies market their products. Lululemon’s direct-to-consumer approach means its products aren’t shelved alongside similar offerings, while Beautyblender’s products are available at retailers like Sephora, where they can sit next to dupes.
Beautyblender is a category creator, which means people often mistakenly label all makeup sponges as Beautyblender. Silva feels that this genericization of the Beautyblender product could lead to consumers choosing a cheaper alternative to the Beautyblender sponge, assuming the quality is the same.
“It is very commendable. But now I have to spend a lot of time telling people why they are not the same,” he said.
Silva says he plans to grow Beautyblender’s DTC business by driving sales on Beautyblender’s website and Amazon storefronts. He also plans to look for a new retail home when his exclusive contract with Sephora for skin products expires next year.
Neuburger says Lululemon is doing nothing specific to protect the cheating culture. He says the increased content around Lululemon dupes acquisitions is “really an interesting sales vehicle” for the company.
“In your ignorance, it reinforces that Lululemon is actually a real thing,” Neuburger said. “So that puts us, I think, in a really ambitious way that we like.”
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