Let's be real, 2025 has been a wild ride for beauty and fashion brands. Inflation's still biting, ad costs are up, and consumers are more selective with spending. The landscape looks different now. We're hearing from brands that average units per transaction are dipping. Customers are still buying, but they're being more strategic about it, and also spacing out purchases to make their budgets stretch further.

So what exactly are brands doing to move the needle right now? Here's what we've been seeing across the market

While every other brand is knee-deep in TikTok, some forward-thinking brands are diversifying their focus and taking a different path. For the brands we work with, YouTube is taking center stage in 2025.

We’ve always believed in getting brand foundations right first—focusing on brand-building strategies and engaging content, to build vibrant brand communities. Great results on YouTube stem from strong brand foundations and the ability to connect with audiences meaningfully.

But surprisingly, very few indie brands are taking advantage of YouTube ads—a platform with untapped potential and the ability to deliver a more cost-efficient CPC compared to Google or Meta ads, right now. For indie brands looking to scale effectively, it’s a powerful yet underutilized channel for driving more impact and efficiency

The Creator Economy’s worth $250 billion. But brands still get stuck with content they can’t use. And I’ve heard some wild stories from the UGC trenches.

Pet cameos, that were clearly off-brand. Skincare routines filmed on the floor. Bad lighting, odd angles and the list goes on. Over time brands continue to evolve their briefing processes, but in 2025, creators from your own customer community just might be your saving grace.

At this year’s Naturally Good Expo, we hosted a panel with two powerhouse founders Laura Wright of Tuttofare and Ere Perez of Ere Perez Natural Cosmetics – to unpack what it really takes to build modern, meaningful brands.

From Tuttofare's early traction in just a few years to Ere Perez's 20 years of staying power, their lessons apply to all brand leaders navigating growth, differentiation, and market relevance, and here were the standout insights:

Always-on content cycles demand more assets, more posts, and more everything. Every other week, brands are in dire need of more social assets. And in the rush to keep up the risk is that brand content can turn reactive, and let’s be honest, it’s not always your brand’s best work that’s put on show. But over the long-term content that exists just to fill the airtime won’t contribute to building brand equity, because it makes your brand blend in. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. But instead of producing more content, this is your cue to pause.

We've seen this with so many beauty and fashion brands we work with. When we hit pause to realign, the shift in clarity, content quality, and team focus is immediate.

There’s nothing like the momentum that comes with a rebrand. It re-energizes the internal team and signals change to your audience. It often creates a step change, that can unlock new conversations with stockists, investors, and collaborators who now see the brand in a new light. When done right, the experience can become a growth catalyst.

But some brands emerge from a rebrand looking sharp, yet still sounding like their old selves online. They’ve invested in new packaging, a refreshed logo, modern typefaces. But their story and message are still rooted in the past, with the same talking points, narratives that no longer reflect where the brand is headed.

IL Makiage is a $500M D2C beauty brand, and they scaled by leaning into a channel most brands overlook: YouTube ads. While many beauty and fashion brands continue to default to Meta alone, or bury video inside Google Performance Max campaigns, IL Makiage did something different. They treated YouTube like a core growth engine. They bet early, built a dedicated strategy around it, and continue to run the exact same winning ads years later the last time we checked.

By Q2, the energy that fuels January brand resolutions can sometimes begin to fade. The urgent deliverables, the campaign launches, the sales pushes, those still get done. It's the deeper, strategic priorities, the bold brand moves, the vision work, the long-term growth plays, that quietly get pushed to the sidelines. When you’re putting out fires today, it’s hard to build the future you dreamed of in January. In smaller indie brands, without extensive systems or dedicated teams to protect strategic goals, even the most ambitious plans often get shelved fast.

Trends may come and go, but one thing always remains constant: life events have a powerful impact on how people shop. Big moments, like landing a new job, getting engaged, or graduating, often spark a desire for a new look. This is when people rethink their style, upgrade their beauty routines, and seek out new products. For brands, this presents a golden opportunity: reaching customers when they’re most open to change.

YouTube has become one of the most powerful, yet underused, platforms for indie brands to show up meaningfully, and this is where our clients are beginning to double down. Clever brands are tapping in to YouTube’s Life Events ad targeting helps beauty and fashion brands connect with consumers at exactly the right time - when they’re ready to enhance their look and invest in themselves.

The brands that everyone’s talking about right now have unlocked a fundamental truth: a brand is more than a product or a logo. It’s an idea, a philosophy, a movement, or an identity that people connect with and want to be part of.

A brand philosophy is what you stand for, believe in, and why you exist in the first place. Leading brands have developed a compelling philosophy that’s documented in their brand story. They use it as a playbook for everything they do, from inspiring content storytelling to digital community building and even as a litmus test for product design. That’s how every touch point becomes an expression of a bigger narrative.