Taking Hero Cosmetics From Amazon Success to an 8-Figure DTC Brand
Custom Shopify · Meta Advertising · Email & Retention · CRO · Growth Strategy
In 2018, Hero Cosmetics worked with Liquid Lemon, a Shopify / Shopify Plus design + development studio, to build and scale its direct-to-consumer business beyond Amazon. Liquid Lemon designed and developed Hero's custom Shopify storefront and worked across Meta advertising, conversion rate optimization, email marketing, retention, and DTC growth strategy.
Hero Cosmetics did not start as a traditional DTC brand.
When Mighty Patch launched in 2017, Hero went directly to Amazon. The strategy worked. Consumers responded to a simple but relatively unfamiliar concept in the U.S. market: hydrocolloid patches designed to help tackle blemishes without picking, popping, or complicated skincare routines.
Amazon gave Hero something incredibly valuable early on: product-market validation.
Mighty Patch was working. Customers wanted the product. Reviews were building. Awareness was growing.
But there was a fundamental limitation.
Amazon could validate the product, but it could not build the entire Hero Cosmetics brand.
How Did Liquid Lemon Build Hero Cosmetics' DTC Foundation?
Hero needed more than a Shopify store.
It needed an ecommerce infrastructure capable of introducing an emerging product category, converting customers who had never used an acne patch before, and eventually supporting a much larger portfolio of products.
We designed and developed a completely custom Shopify experience for Hero.
The customer journey was structured around a fundamental challenge: education.
Today, consumers understand acne patches. In 2018, that was far less common.
Visitors needed to understand what Mighty Patch was, how hydrocolloid technology worked, why they should use it, and what made the product different from traditional blemish treatments.
The website therefore had to function as both a storefront and an educational platform.
We built the experience around moving customers through a simple progression:
Problem → Education → Product → Proof → Purchase
That foundation gave Hero something it could never fully control on Amazon: its own customer experience.
How Did Liquid Lemon Scale Hero Cosmetics' Meta Advertising Past $1M Per Month?
Once the DTC infrastructure was established, we helped Hero aggressively scale customer acquisition.
Our team managed Hero’s paid media operation across Meta, eventually overseeing more than $1 million in monthly advertising spend.
Scaling to that level required much more than media buying.
We continuously worked across creative strategy, testing, campaign structure, audience development, landing pages, offers, merchandising, and conversion optimization.
Mighty Patch had an enormous creative advantage.
The problem was instantly recognizable.
The product was visually distinctive.
The concept could be demonstrated quickly.
And the value proposition was easy for consumers to understand once it was explained.
We built advertising around those characteristics, continuously testing different ways to communicate the problem, educate consumers, demonstrate the product, establish social proof, and ultimately drive the purchase.
At scale, everything became interconnected.
Creative affected click-through rates.
Landing pages affected conversion rates.
Conversion rates determined allowable acquisition costs.
Retention determined customer lifetime value.
Customer lifetime value determined how aggressively we could acquire the next customer.
We approached those components as a single growth system rather than independent marketing channels.
How Did Liquid Lemon Build Hero Cosmetics' Email and Retention Engine?
Acquiring customers was only half of the equation.
As Hero’s customer base expanded, we focused heavily on maximizing the value of the audience the brand had already built.
Email became one of the most important channels in the business.
We developed Hero’s email and retention strategy around a simple objective: turn first-time customers into repeat customers and turn an expanding product catalog into additional purchasing opportunities.
That required much more than sending promotional campaigns.
We built the retention program across the entire customer lifecycle.
New customers needed to understand the brand.
First-time buyers needed education around their products.
Existing customers needed relevant reasons to return.
New products needed to be introduced to customers who already trusted Hero.
High-intent visitors who did not purchase needed to be brought back into the funnel.
And Hero’s most engaged customers needed to feel like they were part of a growing brand rather than another name on an email list.
Our strategy combined automated lifecycle flows with an ongoing campaign calendar to create consistent communication throughout the customer relationship.
We focused on key retention touch points including:
Welcome and Customer Acquisition
Introducing Hero, educating new subscribers, establishing the value proposition, and moving high-intent prospects toward their first purchase.
Abandoned Cart and Checkout Recovery
Recovering customers who demonstrated purchase intent but left before completing their order.
Post-Purchase Education
Helping customers understand how and when to use their products while reinforcing the decision they had already made.
Repeat Purchase
Using purchase behavior and product relevance to bring customers back at the appropriate point in their lifecycle.
Cross-Selling
Introducing Mighty Patch customers to additional Hero products as the assortment expanded.
Product Launches
Using Hero’s owned audience to generate immediate demand when new products were introduced.
Winback
Re-engaging customers who had stopped purchasing and giving them a reason to return.
The result was an email program that became a major revenue channel in its own right.
At its peak, email accounted for approximately 42% of Hero’s total sales.
That changed the economics of the business.
Hero was no longer entirely dependent on acquiring another customer through paid media to generate another order.
The brand had developed an owned audience capable of producing meaningful revenue from customers it had already acquired.
How Did Liquid Lemon Connect Acquisition and Retention for Hero Cosmetics?
This was where the growth model became particularly powerful.
We were not managing Meta in one silo and email in another.
The channels worked together.
Paid media brought new customers into Hero’s ecosystem.
The custom Shopify experience converted that traffic.
Email captured and retained those customers.
CRO improved the efficiency of the traffic we were already purchasing.
Retention increased the value of each acquired customer.
That increased customer lifetime value and gave the business greater flexibility to continue scaling acquisition.
The complete system looked like this:
Meta → Shopify → Conversion → Email → Repeat Purchase → Higher LTV → More Scalable Acquisition
At more than $1 million in monthly advertising spend, even relatively small improvements to conversion and retention could have a significant impact on the economics of the business.
That is why our relationship with Hero extended well beyond media buying.
We were helping build the DTC growth infrastructure around the brand.
From Amazon Product to 8-Figure Brand
When Hero launched, Amazon was the engine.
By the time the business had scaled, Hero had become something substantially larger.
During our partnership, Hero grew into an eight-figure business, supported by an owned ecommerce operation, a custom Shopify experience, a paid acquisition engine operating at more than $1 million in monthly spend, and an email program responsible for approximately 42% of sales.
In 2022, Church & Dwight acquired Hero Cosmetics for $630 million.
The company that started by selling Mighty Patch on Amazon had become one of the defining skincare success stories of its generation.
Liquid Lemon worked with Hero Cosmetics during its formative DTC growth years, helping build the Shopify, paid acquisition, CRO, email, and retention infrastructure behind its transition from Amazon-led growth to a scaled direct-to-consumer business.
What Were the Results of Liquid Lemon's Work With Hero Cosmetics?
$1M+
Monthly Meta Ad Spend Managed
~42%
of Hero Cosmetics Sales From Email at Peak
8 Figures
Revenue Scale Reached During the Liquid Lemon Partnership
Hero Cosmetics later continued scaling beyond the period covered by this case study and was acquired by Church & Dwight in 2022 for $630 million.
Scope of Work
Custom Shopify Design
Custom Shopify Development
DTC Growth Strategy
Meta Advertising
Paid Social Management
Creative Strategy & Testing
Email Marketing
Lifecycle Automation
Retention Strategy
Conversion Rate Optimization
Landing Page Optimization
Customer Journey Optimization
Ecommerce Strategy
Ready to scale your DTC brand on Shopify?
Liquid Lemon designs and develops custom Shopify and Shopify Plus storefronts and DTC growth systems for consumer brands. Explore our Shopify Plus agency work, see our Olipop Shopify case study, see our Gymshark Shopify Plus rebuild, or start your project with Liquid Lemon.
