Sam Chapman Teams With Beauty Pie for Makeup Collaboration
LONDON — Marcia Kilgore, the founder of Beauty Pie, has an eye for people — the ones she hires and those she collaborates with.
“It’s about the perfect mix of magic and logic — and understanding how important the magic is, while also being logical, but sometimes what you see is totally illogical,” she said in an interview, unveiling a collaboration with the makeup artist Sam Chapman launching Wednesday.
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Kilgore admits that she reached out to Chapman personally via an Instagram direct message — a way of communication that has worked for her previously (put to the test with Jenna Lyons, who collaborated with Beauty Pie in 2022).
The two women have teamed up to curate an edit of nine beauty products that they deem “must-have items,” consisting of an eye paint in three shades, an eye shadow crayon, four liquid lipsticks and a lip and cheek tint.
Chapman’s aim with the edit was to create a collection of makeup products that work “universally” with all skin tones and types, something she’s come to be more aware of as she’s aged.
She’s added sentimentality to the edit by naming some of the matte liquid lipsticks after her children’s nicknames — one is called Pops and another is called Bear. Her eldest daughter also helped her name the rest of the products by choosing names that relate to William Shakespeare’s work, from Lady M, Verona to Cassio.
Chapman started her career on YouTube in 2012 with the channel name Pixiwoo and was the founder of the makeup brush line Real Techniques.
Before being approached by Kilgore, Chapman had already been a subscribing member of Beauty Pie for almost six years.
“It started off with me just buying things like shower gel because I tend to forget what I’m going shopping for when I go to Boots and I often have to write a big long list,” she said, adding that she’s been working on the edit for about a year.
“My number-one thing that I’ve learned is to let the people that are good at their jobs do their job, otherwise people try to over-control situations,” Chapman said candidly.
The makeup artist took time out of the limelight, but has since returned by relaunching her YouTube channel under the name of @Samchapmanmakeup amassing 43,300 subscribers.
Kilgore chose to work with Chapman for the “great way she explains makeup,” she said. She has been watching Chapman on YouTube since the early days.
“Chapman is really about creating looks that are reasonable and that women will actually do, which is so important to us at Beauty Pie because we are not about necessarily doing 85 makeup steps,” Kilgore said.
Kilgore said that Beauty Pie, launched in 2016, has been growing, despite the competitive direct-to-consumer landscape. While the rate of growth hasn’t been as fast as it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, the retention rate of customers is the firmest yet — and that’s where the business is focused.
In May 2023, Kilgore appointed Kevin Cornils as the company’s first CEO. He previously held the position of chief commercial officer at Peloton, overseeing the brand’s sales, marketing and international growth strategy.
“We really needed it because what we’re building here is Amazon, Netflix and Costco all at the same time. We have to not only create all of our own products, but we then have to run this whole direct-to-consumer business. I needed a few senior people while still trying to be creative and maintain what made us successful in the first place,” Kilgore said.
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