e.l.f. Cosmetics

e.l.f. Cosmetics is an American makeup and skincare brand based in Oakland, California, founded in June 2004 by Joseph Shamah and Scott Vincent Borba [5]. The name is short for "eyes lips face," and the company built its reputation on selling stylish cosmetics at unusually low prices — its first products were sold direct to consumers for one US dollar each.

The brand is the founding label of e.l.f. Beauty, Inc., which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ELF. In the 2020s e.l.f. became one of the most visible beauty names on social media, credited as the first beauty brand to run an advertising campaign and hashtag challenge on TikTok [8]. The company remains active, with net sales reaching 1.31 billion US dollars in its 2025 fiscal year.

The two founders met at a party in 2002. Shamah was then a 23-year-old business student at New York University; Borba was a 31-year-old veteran of the Los Angeles beauty industry who had earlier worked on Hard Candy, a brand acquired by LVMH in 1999. According to Borba, the idea for e.l.f. came from watching women in expensive cars buy bargain cosmetics at 99-cent stores in Los Angeles — a sign, the founders concluded, of unmet demand for high-quality, stylish makeup at very low prices.

The company launched as a direct-to-consumer brand on eyeslipsface.com with an initial lineup of 13 essentials, including lip liners, eyeliners and brushes, each priced at one US dollar.

Tarang Amin became chairman and chief executive in 2014. Under his leadership the company went public on 27 September 2016, listing 9.58 million shares at 17 US dollars each on the New York Stock Exchange [10]. Harvard Business Review later described the listing as one of the most successful beauty IPOs, noting that shareholder equity grew from 135 million US dollars to more than 8 billion in the years that followed [6].

The company has reported sustained expansion since the listing. It closed its 2025 fiscal year with net sales up 28 percent to 1.31 billion US dollars, which it described as its 25th consecutive quarter of net sales growth [6].

e.l.f. Cosmetics is owned by e.l.f. Beauty, Inc., a publicly traded company and a component of the S&P 400 [5]. Alongside the flagship line, the parent company operates a portfolio that has grown partly through acquisition. In August 2023 it announced the purchase of the skincare brand Naturium for 355 million US dollars, completing the deal that October [5]. In 2025 it acquired rhode, the beauty brand co-founded by model Hailey Bieber, for up to 1 billion US dollars — 800 million at closing plus a potential earnout of up to 200 million — with the transaction closing on 5 August 2025 [9]. The wider portfolio also includes Keys Soulcare, founded with the musician Alicia Keys, and W3LL PEOPLE.

The brand's central idea is to make prestige-quality cosmetics affordable. Where its first products sold for one US dollar, the catalogue today carries an average retail price of around nine US dollars. The company connects this mission to its name, stating that "celebrating the beauty of every eye, lip and face is fundamental to our DNA." Its products are sold across roughly 18 countries through mass-market retailers including Target, Walmart and Dollar General.

e.l.f.'s range spans makeup, skincare, bath products, brushes and professional tools, and its current lines are designated e.l.f. Cosmetics and e.l.f. Skin. Two face products anchored its recent social-media visibility: the Power Grip Primer, a gripping base that drew 68 million views on TikTok and was nicknamed "Sticky AF" and "makeup glue" by users, and the Halo Glow Liquid Filter, often paired with the primer as a layering complexion product [11].

The company states that all of its products are vegan and free of animal testing. e.l.f. is certified cruelty-free under both PETA's Global Animal Test-Free program and the Leaping Bunny standard, the latter since 2022 [7].

e.l.f.'s marketing has leaned heavily on social platforms and celebrity tie-ins. The company says its early TikTok campaign generated 7 billion views and close to 5 million user-generated videos, making it one of the most viral campaigns on the platform [8]. Jennifer Coolidge starred in the brand's first Super Bowl commercial, and its 2025 acquisition of rhode kept Hailey Bieber involved as the smaller brand's chief creative officer [9].

e.l.f. Cosmetics is active and operates at global scale. Its most recent publicly recorded activity includes an October 2025 marketing campaign announcement, and the brand continues to publish through its corporate channels.