Flower Beauty
Drew Barrymore's affordable beauty brand. Launched exclusively at Walmart in 2013, hit $50M in annual sales, then shut down in 2025 when its parent company pivoted away from makeup.
In January 2013, Drew Barrymore did something that no A-list celebrity had really done before: she launched a beauty brand at Walmart. Not at Sephora, not at Nordstrom, not through her own website with a $40 price floor. At Walmart, where the most expensive product in her 181-SKU lineup cost $13.98. While most celebrity beauty brands position themselves as prestige or aspirational, Flower Beauty bet that a Hollywood actress could build a credible cosmetics line for women who actually shop at mass retail. For several years, that bet paid off handsomely.
At its peak, Flower Beauty was generating an estimated $50 million in annual retail sales across Walmart, Ulta Beauty, and CVS. Barrymore co-owned the brand with Maesa, a beauty incubator that handled formulation, manufacturing, and operations, and she reinvested what would have been an advertising budget directly into product quality. The brand spent two to three times more on formulation and packaging than the average mass-market cosmetics line, and it never ran a single traditional advertisement. Then, in 2025, Maesa shut Flower Beauty down entirely as part of a strategic pivot away from color cosmetics, ending a 13-year run that proved celebrity brands could work at the drugstore level but also showed how dependent a founder can become on the company that builds the product behind the scenes.
At a glance:
| Founded | January 2013 |
| Founder | Drew Barrymore |
| Parent company | Maesa (Bain Capital-backed beauty incubator) |
| Revenue (peak) | ~$50M in annual retail sales (estimated, 2018) |
| Launch price range | $4.98 to $13.98 |
| Launch SKUs | 181 products across eye, face, lip, and nail |
| Initial retail | Walmart exclusive (1,500 stores) |
| Peak retail | Walmart (4,000 stores), Ulta Beauty (~500 stores), CVS (3,000 stores) |
| Status | Closed (September 2025) |
| Cruelty-free | Yes (manufactured in the USA, never tested on animals) |
The Story
From child star to beauty founder
Drew Barrymore became a global name at seven years old when she starred in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and the decades that followed were as turbulent as they were public. She struggled with addiction as a teenager, entered rehab twice before turning 15, and successfully petitioned for legal emancipation from her parents. By her early twenties, she had rebuilt herself into one of Hollywood’s most bankable rom-com stars, commanding up to $15 million per film for movies like The Wedding Singer, Never Been Kissed, and Charlie’s Angels. She also co-founded Flower Films, a production company she built with partner Nancy Juvonen in 1995 that produced many of her own starring vehicles.
By the time she was in her late thirties, Barrymore had spent her entire life in makeup chairs. She understood formulations, textures, and pigments the way professional makeup artists do, because she had been sitting in front of them since she was old enough to talk. When she decided to start a beauty brand, she did not want to slap her name on a licensing deal and collect royalty checks. She wanted to build something she actually owned and could shape from the inside, which led her to Maesa, a New York-based beauty incubator that specializes in developing, manufacturing, and distributing brands from the ground up.
The Walmart bet
Here is what made Flower Beauty unusual in 2013: Barrymore chose Walmart as her exclusive launch partner, and she chose it on purpose. At the time, the celebrity beauty playbook involved launching at a prestige retailer like Sephora or Nordstrom, pricing products between $25 and $50, and relying on the founder’s fame to drive foot traffic into high-end stores. Barrymore flipped that model completely, because she wanted to reach the women who could not afford $40 lipstick but still wanted products made with quality ingredients, and Walmart gave her access to a customer base that most celebrity founders never even considered.
The launch was massive in scope, and Flower debuted with 181 products across four categories (eye, face, lip, and nail) in more than 1,500 Walmart stores and on Walmart.com by the end of January 2013. Every single product was priced between $4.98 and $13.98. As a co-owner of the brand, Barrymore chose not to spend money on traditional advertising, instead using her own media appearances and magazine features as the primary marketing channel. That decision freed up capital, and the brand reinvested it directly into formulation: Flower was spending two to three times more on ingredients and packaging per product than the average mass-market beauty brand, which meant the products inside those $6 tubes were formulated closer to what you would find at a $30 price point in a department store.
By 2016, Walmart had expanded Flower Beauty to 4,000 locations, more than doubling the brand’s physical footprint in three years.
Expansion beyond Walmart
In 2018, Flower Beauty took the step that most Walmart-exclusive brands aspire to but few actually pull off: it expanded into Ulta Beauty. The brand launched in approximately 500 Ulta stores with four exclusive products, including the Wanderlust Eye Shadow Palette and the Galaxy Glaze Holographic Lip, and the plan was to reach 600 Ulta doors by year’s end. Industry sources told WWD at the time that Flower Beauty was generating roughly $50 million in annual retail sales, making it one of the most commercially successful celebrity beauty brands operating at mass-market prices.
CVS followed shortly after, and by 2020 Flower Beauty was in 3,000 CVS stores. The brand also expanded into fragrance with Flower by Drew Barrymore, launched Flower Eyewear in 2015, and eventually extended the Flower brand into home goods. The Drew Barrymore Flower Home collection arrived at Walmart in 2019 with more than 200 items ranging from $18 to $899, followed by Flower Kids for children’s decor, and later the Beautiful Kitchenware line in 2021. What started as a cosmetics brand became the anchor of a lifestyle empire, all built on the back of Barrymore’s relationship with Walmart.
The quiet decline
Despite all that expansion, Flower Beauty’s core cosmetics business started losing momentum in a market that was getting more crowded every year. Brands like e.l.f. Cosmetics were aggressively eating into the affordable beauty space with viral TikTok-driven marketing and a price point that undercut even Flower’s low prices. Newer celebrity brands like Rare Beauty and Fenty Beauty were capturing younger consumers who had no particular connection to Drew Barrymore’s film career. The brand’s year-to-date share of sales on Ulta’s website was declining across multiple categories, with drops as steep as 81% in some product segments.
In September 2025, Maesa officially shut Flower Beauty down for good. The brand’s website went dark, its social media accounts stopped posting (the last Instagram post was December 2024), and products were cleared out at steep discounts on Ulta’s website before disappearing from shelves entirely. Maesa, which was acquired by Bain Capital Private Equity and had grown to $449 million in total sales by 2023, confirmed it was exiting the color cosmetics category altogether to focus on skincare, body care, fragrance, and haircare, where growth was stronger. Flower Beauty was the first brand Maesa ever incubated, and it was the last one standing in the makeup category when the company decided makeup was no longer part of its future.
The Strategy
Mass retail from day one
Most celebrity brands launch at prestige retailers because the association with Sephora or Nordstrom signals quality to consumers who are spending $30 or more on a single product. Barrymore went the other direction entirely, and she launched at Walmart because she wanted to reach women who do their beauty shopping alongside their grocery shopping, and she was willing to accept the lower per-unit margins that come with a $5 to $14 price range in exchange for the sheer volume that 1,500 (and eventually 4,000) Walmart stores could provide.
This was a meaningful retail distribution decision because it shaped everything else about the brand. When your most expensive product costs $13.98, you cannot afford celebrity-tier advertising budgets, premium packaging, or the kind of retail fixtures that prestige brands use to stand out in Sephora. Every dollar has to go into the product itself, which is exactly what Barrymore did. The result was a brand that consistently over-delivered on quality relative to its price point, which earned genuine loyalty from women who discovered it while shopping at Walmart and could not believe what they were getting for under $10.
Zero advertising, founder as the media channel
Flower Beauty never ran a single traditional advertisement in its 13-year history. No TV spots, no print campaigns, no influencer deals with paid endorsements. Instead, Barrymore served as the brand’s entire marketing apparatus through her own celebrity, her magazine appearances, and eventually her daytime talk show on CBS. She described her philosophy as putting all the money into formulations and packaging rather than into advertising, and the math worked: by eliminating a traditional marketing budget, the brand could afford to spend two to three times more on product quality than competitors at the same price point.
This model has a ceiling, though, and it becomes visible quickly. It works when the founder’s celebrity is high enough to generate consistent earned media without paying for it, and it breaks when that celebrity fades or when newer, louder brands start dominating the conversation. Barrymore’s approach was authenticity-driven (she refused to pay bloggers and influencers for product endorsements, insisting on organic word of mouth from real users), which kept costs low but also meant the brand could never manufacture the kind of viral moments that e.l.f. was engineering on TikTok.
Co-ownership with an incubator
Barrymore was not a licensee collecting royalty checks from a company that did all the real work. She co-owned Flower Beauty alongside Maesa, which gave her real equity and ownership in the business and direct involvement in product decisions. Maesa handled the operational side, including formulation, manufacturing, distribution, and retail relationships, while Barrymore focused on creative direction, product testing, and being the face of the brand. This structure is fundamentally different from a brand licensing deal, where the celebrity has no ownership stake and no control over what happens to the business.
The trade-off was that Barrymore’s ownership was tied to Maesa’s strategic direction. When Maesa decided in 2025 that color cosmetics was no longer worth pursuing, Flower Beauty shut down regardless of whether Barrymore wanted it to continue. Owning a brand alongside an incubator gives you more control than licensing, but less control than building independently or raising venture capital to fund your own operations. It is a middle path that works well when the incubator and the founder are aligned, and falls apart when the incubator’s priorities shift.
Expanding from beauty into lifestyle
The Flower brand did not stay confined to cosmetics for long. Barrymore extended it into eyewear (2015), home furnishings (2019), children’s decor (2019), and kitchen appliances (2021, under the Beautiful brand). Each new product line launched through Walmart, reinforcing the partnership and giving Barrymore a brand ecosystem that few celebrity founders have built outside of the luxury tier. The home line alone included more than 200 items, and the Beautiful Kitchenware line became one of Walmart’s most visible celebrity home partnerships.
This expansion strategy treated the Flower name as a trust signal rather than a product category. If women trusted Drew Barrymore’s taste in lipstick, the logic went, they would also trust her taste in throw pillows and kitchen mixers. It worked commercially, but it also diluted the brand’s identity as a beauty company, which may have contributed to the cosmetics line’s gradual fade as consumer attention shifted toward brands with a singular, obsessive focus on beauty.
The Marketing
Flower Beauty’s marketing strategy was Drew Barrymore herself, and for years, that was more than enough. She was one of the most recognized women in America, with a warmth and approachability that translated directly into consumer trust at the mass-market level. Instead of spending money on paid endorsements, the brand relied on Barrymore’s own social media presence, her frequent magazine features, and her reputation as someone who genuinely used the products she was selling.
When The Drew Barrymore Show launched on CBS in September 2020, the brand gained something most celebrity beauty brands would pay millions for: a daily, nationally televised platform with the founder as the host. Barrymore was careful not to turn the show into a permanent Flower Beauty infomercial (she publicly said she would support and recommend products from any brand she actually loved), but the show gave her consistent visibility and kept her name in the cultural conversation in a way that most founders cannot replicate.
The brand’s social media philosophy mirrored its advertising philosophy: authenticity over spend. Barrymore’s team did not pay beauty bloggers or vloggers for product placement. They relied instead on organic reviews from real customers who discovered Flower Beauty at Walmart and shared their experiences because they were genuinely surprised by the quality. That strategy built a loyal core audience but could not compete with the manufactured virality that was reshaping the beauty industry by the early 2020s. Brands like e.l.f. Cosmetics were spending heavily on TikTok campaigns and generating billions of hashtag views, while Flower Beauty’s marketing approach remained rooted in the pre-TikTok world of celebrity authenticity and earned media placements.
The Numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Launch year | 2013 |
| Launch SKUs | 181 |
| Launch price range | $4.98 to $13.98 |
| Walmart stores at launch | 1,500 |
| Walmart stores (peak) | 4,000 |
| Ulta stores (2018) | ~500 |
| CVS stores (2020) | 3,000 |
| Estimated annual revenue (peak) | ~$50M |
| Years in operation | 13 |
| Maesa total revenue (2023) | $449M |
| Drew Barrymore net worth | ~$85M (across all ventures) |
Flower Beauty reached an estimated $50 million in annual retail sales by 2018, which made it one of the highest-grossing celebrity beauty brands operating at mass-market price points. To put that in context, the brand was generating that revenue with products that averaged around $8 each, meaning it was moving millions of units per year through a retail footprint that eventually spanned more than 7,500 stores across three major retailers.
Maesa, the incubator behind Flower Beauty, grew to $449 million in total sales by 2023 (up 10% from $410 million in 2022), with revenue doubling between 2020 and 2023. However, that growth was driven by Maesa’s other brands in skincare, body care, and haircare rather than by Flower Beauty, which was losing market share in an increasingly competitive affordable beauty space.
Controversies
The SAG-AFTRA strike and the talk show
In September 2023, Drew Barrymore announced that The Drew Barrymore Show would return for its fourth season despite the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that had shut down most of Hollywood’s production. The decision was immediately and harshly criticized by both industry peers and the show’s own writing staff. The show’s own writers picketed outside the studio, and critics across the entertainment industry accused Barrymore of crossing a picket line, a term that carries serious weight in unionized industries. Social media users and fellow entertainers called the move “scabbing,” referring to workers who operate during a strike and undermine the collective bargaining effort.
Barrymore initially defended the decision in a tearful video, saying she owned the choice and that the show would still comply with WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike rules. Seven days later, she reversed course entirely, announcing she would pause the show’s premiere “until the strike is over” and apologizing publicly. She also stepped down from hosting the National Book Awards ceremony, which had become a secondary flashpoint. The controversy did not directly impact Flower Beauty’s sales, but it damaged the personal brand that served as the cosmetics line’s only marketing engine, creating a period where Barrymore’s name was associated with labor controversy rather than approachable Hollywood warmth.
What You Can Learn
Mass retail is a legitimate strategy for celebrity brands, and in some cases it is the smarter one. While most celebrity founders chase prestige retail because it sounds better in a press release, Barrymore reached millions of women who never set foot in a Sephora. The $50 million revenue figure was built entirely on products that cost less than $14, proving that volume can compensate for lower margins if you have the retail footprint to support it.
Using the founder as the entire marketing budget works until it does not. Flower Beauty’s zero-advertising model was financially efficient and kept product quality high, but it also made the brand completely dependent on one person’s cultural relevance. When the beauty industry’s marketing engine shifted to TikTok and short-form video content, Flower Beauty had no infrastructure to compete because it had never built one.
Co-owning a brand with an incubator gives you more than licensing but less than independence. Barrymore had real equity and creative input, which is better than the pure licensing deals that many celebrities sign. But when Maesa decided to exit color cosmetics in 2025, Barrymore could not save the brand on her own because the incubator controlled manufacturing, distribution, and retail relationships. If you co-own a brand with an operational partner, understand that your brand’s survival depends on their strategic priorities, not yours.
Expanding into too many categories can dilute a beauty brand’s identity. Flower went from cosmetics to eyewear to home furnishings to kitchen appliances. Each extension made business sense individually, but collectively they turned “Flower” from a beauty brand into a general lifestyle label. When it came time to defend shelf space against focused, beauty-obsessed competitors like e.l.f., the brand that also sold throw pillows and air fryers had a harder time convincing consumers it was serious about makeup.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Flower Beauty?
Flower Beauty was a cruelty-free, affordable cosmetics brand co-founded by Drew Barrymore and beauty incubator Maesa in January 2013. The brand launched exclusively at Walmart with 181 products priced between $4.98 and $13.98, eventually expanding to Ulta Beauty and CVS before shutting down in September 2025. At its peak, Flower Beauty was generating an estimated $50 million in annual retail sales.
Why did Flower Beauty close?
Flower Beauty closed because its parent company, Maesa, decided to exit the color cosmetics category entirely and refocus on faster-growing segments like skincare, body care, fragrance, and haircare. The brand had been losing market share for several years as competition in the affordable beauty space intensified, particularly from TikTok-driven brands that captured younger consumers more effectively.
Did Drew Barrymore own Flower Beauty?
Barrymore co-owned Flower Beauty with Maesa rather than operating under a traditional brand licensing arrangement. This gave her real equity in the business and direct involvement in product development, but it also meant the brand’s fate was tied to Maesa’s strategic decisions. When Maesa chose to pivot away from makeup, Flower Beauty ended even though Barrymore had built it from the beginning.
How much revenue did Flower Beauty generate?
Industry sources estimated that Flower Beauty was generating approximately $50 million in annual retail sales by 2018, when the brand expanded into Ulta Beauty. Given that the average product price was around $8 to $10, that revenue figure represented millions of individual units sold across a combined retail footprint of more than 7,500 stores.
Was Flower Beauty cruelty-free?
Flower Beauty was cruelty-free from the beginning, manufactured in the USA, and never tested on animals. Some of the brand’s products were also vegan, though the full line was not entirely vegan.
What other brands did Drew Barrymore create?
Beyond Flower Beauty, Barrymore built an entire ecosystem of Flower-branded products including Flower Eyewear (launched 2015), Drew Barrymore Flower Home (furniture and home decor, 2019), Flower Kids (children’s decor, 2019), and Beautiful Kitchenware (kitchen appliances, 2021). She also co-founded Flower Films, her production company, in 1995. Her estimated net worth across all ventures is approximately $85 million.
Who founded Flower Beauty?
Drew Barrymore co-founded Flower Beauty with Maesa, a Bain Capital-backed beauty incubator that handled formulation, manufacturing, and distribution. Barrymore brought the creative direction and the public face of the brand, while Maesa built the operational backbone.
Who owned Flower Beauty?
Flower Beauty was co-owned by Drew Barrymore and Maesa, a New York-based beauty incubator acquired by Bain Capital Private Equity in 2021. The structure gave Barrymore real equity rather than the royalty arrangement of a typical celebrity licensing deal, but it also meant the brand’s fate was tied to Maesa’s strategic priorities. When Maesa exited color cosmetics in September 2025, Flower Beauty shut down.
When was Flower Beauty founded?
Flower Beauty launched in January 2013 as a Walmart exclusive across more than 1,500 stores, with 181 products priced between $4.98 and $13.98. It was the first brand Maesa ever incubated and ran for 13 years before closing in September 2025.
Where was Flower Beauty made?
Flower Beauty products were manufactured in the USA and never tested on animals. Maesa, the incubator behind the brand, handled production and quality control across the full lineup.
Sources
- PR Newswire, “Drew Barrymore, Walmart and Maesa Launch Premium Cosmetics Line,” January 2013. Launch details, SKU count, price range, Walmart store count, formulation investment strategy.
- Beauty Independent, “Drew Barrymore’s Makeup Brand Flower Beauty Closes,” 2025. Closure details, Maesa’s exit from color cosmetics, brand history.
- Global Cosmetics News, “Flower Beauty Shuts Down as Maesa Exits Mass Makeup,” 2025. $50M revenue estimate, sales decline data, Maesa’s strategic pivot.
- Cosmetics Business, “Drew Barrymore’s Flower Beauty Brand Closes After 13 Years,” 2025. Closure timeline, retail availability status, social media inactivity.
- WWD, “Drew Barrymore’s Flower Beauty Blooms in Ulta,” 2018. Ulta expansion details, exclusive product launches, $50M revenue estimate.
- Executive Woman Media, “Drew Barrymore: Flower Power”. Ownership structure, zero-advertising strategy, formulation investment details.
- Retail Brew, “Maesa CEO Shares How Its Beauty Brands Find Success in Mass,” February 2024. Maesa revenue figures, growth trajectory.
- Bain Capital, “Maesa Enters Next Growth Phase,” 2021. Bain Capital acquisition of Maesa.
- Rolling Stone, “The Drew Barrymore Show Finds Itself at the Center of the Strike,” 2023. SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike controversy details.
- CBS News, “Drew Barrymore Says She Will Pause the Return of Her Talk Show,” 2023. Strike reversal, public apology.
- Hollywood Reporter, “Drew Barrymore Launches Affordable Flower Home Furnishings,” 2019. Flower Home collection details.
- Celebrity Net Worth, “Drew Barrymore Net Worth”. Net worth estimate.