Why Women’s Time Poverty Is About to Create a $10B Beauty Category

Women have hundreds fewer hours of free time than men. And one brand just capitalized on that insight to hit $200 million in retail sales. Merit Beauty launched in January 2021 with a radical positioning: “We’re not for beauty lovers.”

While every other beauty brand was chasing trend-obsessed customers with endless product lines and complex routines, Merit did something different. They built for the woman who doesn’t want to think about makeup at all.

The numbers prove it works. Merit hit $200 million in retail sales in 2025 by growing both direct-to-consumer and Sephora businesses simultaneously. Funded by L Catterton, Marcy Venture Partners, and Sonoma Brands, the brand is now heading into year five, the exact zone where exits happen.

Founder Katherine Power already proved she understands the playbook. Her brand, Versed, just sold to Windsong Global. Now she’s ready to do it again with Merit.

She launched Merit during early COVID when makeup was being pared back globally. Women weren’t going to offices. Foundation felt suffocating. The whole beauty industry was reassessing what “essential” actually meant.

Coming out of the late 2010s, the beauty market was drowning in complexity. Sephora was cluttered with hundreds of brands. Makeup was fussy with contouring, strobing, endless tutorials. “No makeup makeup” brands still had 100+ products and required you to understand nuance.

That was the moment Merit arrived with serios simplicity. Katherine didn’t just identify a trend. She identified a permanent shift in consumer behavior. COVID ended, makeup didn’t go back to complexity. Women didn’t suddenly start wanting to care again. The preference for simplicity only deepened.

But here’s what nobody’s talking about: Merit’s potential exit strategy just exposed why every other beauty brand in the market is going to struggle to find a buyer.