Project Manager, Manufacturing Partner · Lab to production
Consumer Experience Starts Long Before Marketing
Lessons from helping bring a viral beauty product to life inside a cosmetics manufacturing facility.
Testing a gloss formula in the lab.
The finished retail line: Sexyy Gloss, eight shades.
Sexyy Gloss, a lip gloss line from Northside Princess (Sexyy Red), became a viral beauty moment: bold names, standout packaging, and a product built to be talked about. I worked from inside the manufacturing facility as project manager, coordinating product development from early lab formulation through production readiness. This wasn't the brand's marketing or launch team. It was the side of the process nobody outside the facility ever sees.
“Everyone remembers the packaging, the names, and the online hype. I remember what it took to make sure the product lived up to that hype.”
What Consumers Saw
- Bold, unapologetic product names
- Packaging built to stop the scroll
- A viral beauty and culture moment
- A product designed to feel fun, memorable, and shareable
What Happened Behind the Scenes
- Testing gloss formulas round after round until texture, consistency, flavor, and color felt right
- Navigating vegan ingredient and pigment requirements
- Sending samples back and forth with the client for feedback and sign-off
- Running stability testing to confirm the formula would perform reliably over time
- Coordinating packaging arrival so we could run a test batch on the production line
- Supporting the handoff from lab development to full production readiness
Inside the Lab
Mixing a batch of the red gloss formula on the lab hot plate.
Sexyy Red formula test batch
Test batch, round two
Sample tubes labeled and staged for client review
Nude shade formulations in development
Sexyy Red Jelly Lip Gloss: flavor and shade testing
Bold shade names, ready for labeling
Packaging insert design
Picking out pigments for the client, against the full pigment library.
Strategic Insight
Viral products are built through a series of micro choices that eventually shape the entire customer experience
What This Taught Me as a Marketer
- 01A brand promise has to be backed by the product experience.
- 02Flavor, texture, color, packaging, and consistency all shape perception.
- 03Marketing's job is to uncover the truth already built into the product, not manufacture one.
- 04Cross-functional alignment between lab, client, and production floor is part of brand-building, even when it happens off-camera.
“This experience shaped how I approach marketing today. I don't just think about the campaign. I think about the product, the customer expectation, the operational reality, and the story that connects them.”