TL;DR
A well-known celebrity proposed a limited-edition Elelaf collaboration that would have moved real volume and meaningful awareness. We said no. The collaboration would have demanded a fast-cycle product launch, marketing investment that does not return after the campaign ends, and a brand association that did not match the slow-skincare thesis. We chose to put the same money into clinical testing and a smaller, slower product expansion instead.
The pitch arrived in a deck and the deck was good. Twelve slides, professionally designed, with audience numbers that would have spiked our first-year revenue forecast by a multiple I will not specify because the celebrity is real and the conversation is confidential. We had three meetings. We declined. This essay is the reasoning, because the decision is the kind of thing brands rarely write down honestly, and because the reasoning is consistent with everything else we have published about how we want to operate.
What the collaboration would have looked like
A limited-edition product, co-branded, with the celebrity’s name and likeness on the carton. The product would have been formulated in roughly four months, an aggressive timeline the agency assured us was normal for the category. Marketing investment, jointly funded, focused on the launch quarter and the celebrity’s media calendar. Revenue split, with the celebrity’s team taking a percentage higher than industry-average. The numbers were plausible. The audience reach was real. What the deck did not address was what happened in quarter two, quarter four, and year three.
The four reasons we said no
First, the formulation timeline. A four-month cycle for a product class we had not built before would have been the fastest piece of work the lab has ever done; our core microbiome formulas each ran 18 to 26 months from concept to release. Compressing that to a quarter meant either cutting corners or white-labeling an existing supplier formula with a celebrity’s name on it. The first option violates the brand’s reason for existing; the second is what most celebrity collaborations actually are, and we did not want to ship that product.
Second, the audience match. The celebrity’s audience is large and devoted; the demographic was a reasonable match with our customer profile. The behavioral match was weaker. That audience consumes skincare content rapidly, switches on a trend cycle, and rewards novelty over depth. We would have spent the launch quarter winning customers who churned out by the second purchase cycle.
Third, the marketing math. Celebrity collaborations are spike-shaped. The campaign quarter is enormous; post-campaign quarters revert to baseline. We modelled the three-year LTV against the upfront marketing co-investment and the long-term economics did not justify the short-term volume.
Fourth, the brand association. The collaboration would have placed our brand inside a category (celebrity skincare) defined by a marketing logic we have publicly criticised. The contradiction would have been obvious to the audience that pays the most attention to what brands actually do.
What we chose instead
The marketing co-investment money went into three places. A larger clinical trial on Microbiome Glow Serum with a third-party CRO and a sample size that gives the published data more authority than the launch-quarter scale we had originally planned. Hardware investment in the lab to bring postbiotic stability testing in-house, reducing qualification time on future formulas by an estimated four to six months. A smaller expansion of the product line into one additional category in 2026 instead of two in 2025. The opportunity cost is real; the volume the collaboration would have moved is volume we will not move this year.
The contrarian read on our own decision
There are versions of this story where saying yes is the right call. A founder with a runway problem and one shot at proving the brand can scale should probably take a credible celebrity collaboration on a well-vetted formulation timeline. We are not in that position, which is a privilege and an obligation: the privilege is that we can afford to wait, the obligation is to use that privilege to ship the formulas we said we would ship. It is also possible we are wrong. We have run that scenario; the answer is still no, because the customer relationship we are trying to build does not survive the launch we would have run.
What this means for you as the buyer
The next launch you see from us will be a product the lab spent the time we said it would spend on, not a product we shipped to hit a celebrity’s media window. The price will reflect the formulation cost, not a co-branded marketing budget. The customer relationship the brand wants to build is one that lasts past quarter one.
Frequently asked questions
Who was the celebrity? The conversation was confidential and we are not naming them. The point of the essay is the decision shape, not the specific person.
Did you do any influencer marketing? Yes, with people whose use of the product is genuine and whose audience matches the brand’s slow-routine thesis. The volume from those relationships is smaller and the customer retention is higher.
Would you ever accept a collaboration? With a scientist or dermatologist on a long-cycle formulation partnership, yes. With a celebrity on a quarterly media-cycle launch, no.
Are you anti-celebrity skincare? No. Some celebrity brands are formulated well and run honestly. The structural problem is the launch cadence and customer-acquisition shape, not the existence of the category.
Did you discuss this with the celebrity directly? Yes. The conversation was respectful and the team understood the reasoning.
The decision sits alongside other operational choices that shape the brand. See why we launch in 2026 for the timing reasoning, why our serums are 30ml for the format logic, and the slow skincare manifesto for the broader thesis. Tag hub: skinimalism.
Sources
Founder perspective from Elelaf editorial team. McKinsey & Company, The State of Beauty 2023 industry report. Harvard Business Review, the long-term economics of celebrity brand collaborations, 2022.