Beauty brand Saie is capitalizing on another brand’s creator-marketing opportunity.
Beauty brand Saie turned a competitor’s apparent inaction into a creator-led product launch.
By partnering with TikTok creator Hannah Chody, who had spent years searching for a replacement for a discontinued Tom Ford Beauty eyeshadow, Saie created and launched Bellini, a rose-gold shade that sold out on Sephora’s website within 12 hours.
The opportunity
The story began in 2023, when Chody discovered that Tom Ford Beauty’s Cream and Powder Eye Color in Golden Peach had been discontinued. She had praised the shade in a TikTok video, then learned from a follower that it was no longer in production.
Rather than simply move on, Chody began documenting her search for a close alternative. Over roughly three years, she tested more than 50 eyeshadows and shared the process with her audience. Her TikTok following grew to more than 288,000 people, according to Marketing Brew; Allure later described her as having more than 387,000 followers.
The audience did more than watch. Commenters repeatedly asked whether Tom Ford Beauty would relaunch Golden Peach or collaborate with Chody. Chody told Allure in 2024 that she had tried to contact the brand but had not received a response.
That created a clear commercial opening: a highly engaged community, a specific product need, and a creator already telling the story publicly. Tom Ford Beauty did not act on it. Saie did.
Saie’s response
Saie founder and CEO Laney Crowell said she first noticed Chody’s search through TikTok. As the series gained attention, viewers began tagging Saie in the comments—even though Saie did not yet sell an eyeshadow.
When Saie decided to enter the eyeshadow category, Crowell contacted Chody directly. The timing was unusually fast: Crowell invited Chody to travel to Italy, where Saie’s product was made, to develop the shade in person.
Chody accepted. In the fall of 2025, about two years after her search began, she traveled to Saie’s lab outside Milan. Over several days, she worked with the team to compare colors and adjust the shade using the brand’s SuperSuede Baked Eyeshadow formula, which had not yet reached the market.
The collaboration was not limited to putting Chody’s name on a finished product. She helped create and name the shade, participating in a month of development and multiple rounds of testing. The result was Bellini, a shimmery rose-gold eyeshadow whose name fit Saie’s Italian-inspired eyeshadow naming approach.
Why it worked
The campaign succeeded because it was built around an existing consumer story rather than a conventional sponsored post. Chody had already established credibility by publicly testing dozens of products and being transparent about what did not work.
Her followers had also become participants in the search. They suggested alternatives, followed her comparisons, and ultimately helped direct attention toward Saie. Crowell described that community engagement as central to the campaign’s success.
Saie’s approach also addressed a gap left by the original brand. Chody wanted not only a similar color but a formula she genuinely liked. She said earlier outreach from another brand had not felt like the right fit because she did not feel connected to that brand or passionate about its eyeshadow. With Saie, she was involved in both the color and the formula.
That distinction matters. Bellini was not presented as a generic influencer endorsement; it was positioned as the resolution to a long-running, audience-witnessed search. Saie’s own language—“You say it, we create it”—reinforced that framing.
The launch results
Bellini officially launched on October 15, 2026, as a permanent addition to Saie’s SuperSuede Baked Eyeshadows collection. Before launch, Saie received more than 7,500 waitlist sign-ups.
When the shade became available on Sephora’s website, it sold out in 12 hours. Since then, more than 1,300 people have signed up for restock notifications, according to Saie.
The demand exceeded Saie’s own expectations. Crowell said the brand had forecast a large launch but underestimated interest.
The launch also appears to have benefited the wider brand. Saie said Bellini generated a 305% sales lift across its other core shades, suggesting that the new product drew attention to the broader eyeshadow line rather than functioning as an isolated viral item.
Retail and social execution
Saie used Chody’s owned channels to promote Bellini, but the most consequential activation was a Sephora-hosted TikTok Shop Live event. Saie said the Live set a record for the highest unit sales of any featured Sephora brand to date.
The event generated 6.5 million impressions, and Saie said 89% of those viewers were new to the brand. That makes the campaign notable not only for selling Bellini but also for introducing Saie to a large audience that may not previously have encountered it.
The offline rollout reinforced the online story. Saie sent bellini-making kit mailers, hosted New York events with Chody where attendees could try the product and drink bellinis, and placed a billboard in Austin—where Chody lives—with the tagline “All eyes on Hannah Chody.”
Chody’s posts about the billboard and launch have generated millions of TikTok views, according to Saie.
What it reveals
The case is a strong example of social listening turning into product development. Saie did not merely identify a trending creator; it identified a specific unmet demand, involved the person closest to that demand, and brought the resulting product to market quickly.
It also shows why creator partnerships can be more effective when they begin before the campaign does. Chody’s audience had followed her search for years, so the launch felt like a continuation of an established narrative rather than an abrupt advertisement.
At the same time, Crowell was careful not to present Bellini as a repeatable formula. She said the results were “incredible” but that the campaign’s “magic” would not be easily replicable.
That caution is realistic. The opportunity depended on an unusual combination: a discontinued cult product, a creator with a committed audience, years of public documentation, community tagging, and a competitor that did not respond. Saie’s achievement was recognizing those conditions and executing on them.
The larger lesson
For beauty brands, the lesson is not simply “find an influencer and make a product.” It is to pay attention to the conversations already happening around unmet needs, especially when consumers are openly asking a brand to act.
Tom Ford Beauty’s discontinued Golden Peach created the demand. Chody’s content gave that demand visibility. Saie converted it into a product, a retail moment, and a measurable sales outcome.
The campaign also illustrates a shift in creator marketing: creators are increasingly being treated as collaborators in product development, not merely promotional faces. In Saie’s case, that deeper involvement helped make Bellini feel credible to the audience that had been waiting for it.
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