How Sarelly Raised $3 Million to Enter 600 Target Stores With Target Beauty Studio

Sarelly, a Mexico City-based beauty brand founded in 2022, raised $3 million in a bridge round to fund a nationwide expansion that began in September 2026, placing products across more than 600 Target locations. The funding came from returning investors Wollef, Sandbox Studios and Semilla Ventures alongside new backers Silas Capital, Siddhi Capital and Pentland Ventures.

The capital powers Sarelly’s entry into Target Beauty Studio, a new prestige beauty section that launched September 10, 2026, across more than 600 stores and on Target.com. Target Beauty Studio features 90 prestige, emerging and global brands, with over 60 new to Target. Target’s strategy represents a shift in how mass-market retailers approach prestige beauty, creating dedicated spaces with specialized staff and personalized recommendations—elements previously available mostly at specialty retailers.

What distinguishes Sarelly from other beauty brands entering US retail is its business model: co-founder Anna Sarelly, one of Mexico’s leading beauty creators, built the brand on entertainment-based storytelling and community product development rather than paid advertising. Co-founder Rémi Martini, a former executive at LVMH, L’Oréal and Coty, brings more than a decade of beauty-industry experience. Together they created a brand positioned as “the first global beauty brand out of Mexico” rather than a Latina-adapted product line—a distinction Martini emphasized when describing the founding strategy. Sarelly projects $15 million in revenue for 2026, with approximately $10 million from Mexico and $5 million from the United States.

Building Products Through Community Co-Creation

Sarelly’s product strategy centers on community co-creation, with over 100,000 consumer votes shaping each launch. Rather than relying on focus groups or market research conducted by third parties, the brand invites customers to vote on new products, colors and formulations. This approach transforms customers into collaborators and reduces the guesswork in product development, while building audience ownership of the final product.

The model proved effective with Sarelly’s flagship product, the Cow Lashes mascara, named after the Mexican expression “pestañas de vaca.” The product was formulated specifically for straight, downward-growing lashes common among Latina consumers. It achieved the number-one mascara position across Sephora, Ulta Beauty Mexico, Costco and TikTok Shop Mexico by the end of 2023. At Target, Martini said it has reportedly become the number-one SKU across Target Beauty Studio.

The design philosophy reveals a deliberate approach: products are engineered to address specific beauty needs within Sarelly’s core audience, then positioned to capture broader appeal. The Cow Lashes mascara, created for Latina consumers, also resonates with Asian consumers who face similar lash characteristics, demonstrating that products designed for a specific community can have universal relevance. This contrasts with brands that design for mass appeal first and add cultural elements as marketing afterthoughts.

The brand’s product names and visual identity embrace maximalist aesthetics common in contemporary Mexican culture rather than pursuing the minimalist, neutral aesthetic that dominates prestige beauty. Packaging and formulations reflect bold, expressive design rather than restraint—positioning Sarelly’s maximalism as a cultural asset rather than a market liability.

Sarelly’s Scale and Reach
Sarelly projects $15 million in revenue for 2026 ($10 million from Mexico, $5 million from the U.S.), up from more than $1 million during bootstrapping. The Cow Lashes mascara ranked number-one in Mexico across Sephora, Ulta Beauty Mexico, Costco and TikTok Shop Mexico by end of 2023, and reportedly became the number-one SKU at Target Beauty Studio. Drama en la Chamba generated over 40 million organic views across two seasons without paid advertising.

How Entertainment Replaced Traditional Advertising

Sarelly built audience and engagement through *Drama en la Chamba*, an original telenovela-style series that functions as the brand’s primary marketing tool. The series, produced in Spanish and featuring workplace humor and Mexican cultural references, generated over 40 million organic views across two seasons distributed on TikTok and Instagram, without paid promotion. This organic reach came from audiences seeking the entertainment itself rather than watching because brands paid for distribution.

The content approach differs fundamentally from influencer partnerships or celebrity endorsements. Rather than placing products with creators for temporary visibility, Sarelly embeds products within an entertainment narrative where they belong to the story world. The brand weaves its makeup and skincare into storytelling, making the products integral to the world audiences are consuming rather than interruptions to it.

An upcoming third season of *Drama en la Chamba*, filmed inside a Target location and produced in Spanish, is expected to launch in early November 2026. This continuation extends the content strategy into the retailer that now carries the brand nationally, deepening the integration of entertainment and retail. The production demonstrates commitment to Spanish-language content even as the brand scales into English-speaking markets—a choice that prioritizes cultural authenticity over assumed requirements of mainstream retail.

The content strategy also established Sarelly as the best-selling beauty brand in TikTok Shop Mexico, a significant marker given that platform’s role in Gen Z purchasing decisions across Latin America. This success occurred before the Target expansion, providing proof that the brand’s entertainment-first model could drive substantial sales through purely digital, social commerce channels.

Target Selection Based on Customer Data

Sarelly’s Target expansion was not arbitrary. The company analyzed its first 25,000 U.S. customers and discovered that 63 percent shopped at Target, compared to 33 percent at Ulta and 19 percent at Sephora. This customer data analysis made Target the logical retail partner for scaling nationally, prioritizing where existing customers already shopped rather than pursuing prestige retailers aligned with founder preferences.

Target Beauty Studio, announced in March 2026 and launched in more than 600 stores in September, created a new opportunity for emerging brands. The concept features over 60 brands new to Target, expanding from the “more than 80 global, prestige and emerging brands” the retailer described in March to 90 by the September launch, with “exclusive launches available only at Target.” This structure democratizes prestige beauty retail, giving smaller brands mainstream exposure without requiring entry through selective luxury distribution channels.

The dedicated beauty spaces include specialized staffing, rotating product showcases and personalized recommendations—features previously available mostly at specialty retailers. This infrastructure eliminates a traditional barrier for emerging brands: retail partners with insufficient expertise or interest in brand storytelling. Target Beauty Studio provides emerging brands with the retail environment and personnel support traditionally reserved for established prestige lines.

Rather than placing products with creators for temporary visibility, Sarelly embeds products within an entertainment narrative where they belong to the story world.

Profitability Before Venture Capital

Sarelly achieved profitability during its bootstrapping phase, generating more than $1 million in revenue before raising outside investment. This milestone shaped the company’s approach to fundraising and growth, inverting the typical startup sequence where venture capital funds product-market fit validation.

The $3 million bridge round represents the latest capital injection in a funding history that includes an earlier pre-seed round and a $3 million seed round raised in 2025, bringing total outside funding to $7.5 million. The bridge round’s timing—just before the Target launch—suggests the company raised capital specifically to fund inventory, marketing and logistics for the national retail expansion rather than to validate the business model or pay for customer acquisition.

This capital structure differs fundamentally from many beauty startups that raise venture funding early to gain credibility or establish distribution. Sarelly’s profitability before external funding suggests the community-driven product development and organic content strategy generated sufficient demand and margins to sustain the business through early growth. The brand’s founders could negotiate from a position of strength, raising capital on terms that suited their expansion strategy rather than accepting venture capital on whatever terms were available.

Maintaining Cultural Identity While Scaling

The Target expansion represents Sarelly’s entry into large-format US retail as an independent brand. Unlike many emerging beauty brands that eventually sell to larger conglomerates or accept majority investment, Sarelly has maintained founder control while raising capital. This distinction shapes product strategy, marketing and brand positioning.

Rémi Martini’s background in major beauty conglomerates—companies that typically acquire emerging brands rather than partner with them—creates a distinct perspective. His decision to launch an independent brand and guide it through scaling suggests a different view of the industry’s future, where founder-led brands built on authentic cultural narratives can compete at scale without being absorbed into larger portfolio companies.

The brand’s positioning specifically rejects adaptation of Mexican beauty for US markets in favor of creating a global brand from Mexico. Marketing remains in Spanish as the brand scales, a choice that contradicts conventional retail wisdom suggesting English-language content is necessary for mainstream US audiences. Martini said the company would maintain its Mexican identity and maximalist aesthetics during expansion rather than moderating its creative vision for perceived American preferences.

This approach to scaling—maintaining Spanish-language content, preserving product names like “Pestañas de Vaca,” continuing the telenovela format, and investing in a third season filmed inside Target—reveals a thesis about the future of prestige beauty in the United States. Rather than converging toward a single American aesthetic, the retail landscape is diversifying, with consumers actively seeking brands shaped by specific cultural perspectives. Sarelly’s success in reaching 25,000 US customers before retail expansion suggests this thesis has merit in practice.

Photo: Igor Markov · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons