The two videos drew over 7 million views combined, and Spot On sold out on Marylia Scott Cosmetics’ website within two weeks, while sales of the product soared at CVS, where the online inventory was cleared out. “The timing was perfect with our CVS partnership,” says Scott.

Marylia Scott Cosmetics entered 158 CVS stores in July to grow a retail network that includes Urban Outfitters and Von Maur in the United States and Glam Raider in Australia. To capitalize on the “Love Island” momentum, it ran a retargeting campaign informing people who’d viewed its “Love Island”-related social media content that they could find the brand at CVS locations. Scott says, “It really helped push that launch.”

This year, Marylia Scott Cosmetics anticipates its sales will nearly double, thanks in part to its partnership with CVS and Mustafa’s spotlight on Spot On. According to Scott, Mustafa has been a customer for the last year and a half and bought the product organically. Marylia Scott Cosmetics has since sent Spot On samples to the “Love Island” contestant for her birthday party.

“Love Island,” originally a British reality dating show, has become a massive sensation in the United States. According to NBC Universal, which streams the show on Peacock, for the final week of its seventh season airing July 6, the series ranked as the No. 1 original streaming show in the country, and its fans viewed over 18 billion minutes of “Love Island” during the season’s six-week run. The beauty industry has been figuring out ways to capitalize on “Love Island,” and NYX collaborated with finalists Olandria Carthen and Nic Vansteenberghe on a lip product combo that quickly sold out earlier this month.

Freckle-related products have a habit of going viral. When Taylor Swift wore Fazit’s glitter freckles to a Kansas City Chiefs game in 2024, the brand promptly registered more than $1 million in sales. Scott herself is no stranger to going viral. While she was working at Bath & Body Works, where she was employed from 2015 to 2022 and rose to an art director position, she posted makeup looks online and gained attention for what she calls “super blinding highlighter looks.” Building on her digital presence, Scott launched Marylia Scott Cosmetics in 2019 with a single highlighter palette named YoUr HiGhLiGhT iS ToO BrIgHt.

A week following her 2022 exit from Bath & Body Works to focus on her brand full time, Scott posted on TikTok about sending her highlighter palette to influencer Mikayla Nogueira, who’s worn Marylia Scott Cosmetics’ highlighters in her content. That TikTok video has been viewed over 2 million times and caused the brand to rack up a five-figure sum in highlighter palette sales within a few weeks.

Spot On trailed shortly behind Marylia Scott Cosmetics’ highlighter palette in its market entry. Scott’s main objective with the freckle pen was to develop a water-resistant formula. “I am Puerto Rican, and I go to Puerto Rico to see my family very often, and the times that I actually wanted to wear fake freckles out in the world was at the beach, at the pool, because that’s when you want to look super sunkissed and beautiful,” she says. “And all of the products that were out at the time were water based, so they came off in the water.”

Spot On picked up steam when Marylia Scott Cosmetics joined TikTok Shop’s beta program in 2023. It received a wave of affiliate requests, and a video featuring it accumulated over 30 million views. Today, affiliate marketing is the brand’s principal marketing strategy, and it works with around 15,000 affiliates. The brand offers commissions, provides free samples and often whitelists top-performing content to run as paid ads. Scott says Marylia Scott Cosmetics spends tens of thousands a month on paid ads when campaigns are performing.

Whenever possible, Scott tries to drive sales back to Marylia Scott Cosmetics’ site to capture customer data that can be difficult to gather on TikTok Shop. Right now, customers receive a discount on their second purchase if they order directly through the brand’s site. Scott says, “TikTok is great because you can easily go viral on that app and get a lot of eyes and drive a lot of brand awareness, but to really capture the sale and drive people down your funnel, it gets a little bit more complicated.”

Marylia Scott Cosmetics underwent a rebrand last summer helmed by creative studio YUNGBLD involving new packaging, branding and three new products: Glush, Arch Nemesis and Mind Eraser. The brand’s prices range from $22 to $36. Its highlighter palette is in the process of being rebranded and will relaunch next year. Marylia Scott Cosmetics plans to release an oil-proof version of Spot On later this year.

Discussing the rebrand, Scott says, “Most beauty brands live in a world of neutrals and pinks, so we wanted colors and visuals that make people stop and ask, ‘What is that?’ From a message standpoint, we’ve embraced ‘Extreme makeup formulas that defy the status quo,’ and more recently, ‘Island Proof Makeup,’ to communicate performance and staying power.”

Outside of Mustafa, Emily Ratajkowski, Julia Fox and Anastasia Karanikolaou have been seen using Marylia Scott Cosmetics’ products. A celebrity collaboration is an aspiration for the brand down the line. “We’re focused on being creative and thinking outside of the box and being disruptive and really coming out with things that are not out there,” says Scott. “Because, as you know, beauty is super saturated, and we just want people to really, really just understand the brand and have something different that they can’t get anywhere else.”