How Two Founders Are Building the “Home of Beauty Recommendations” For A $317B Industry

We sat down with Jessica Fox, BeautyShelf Co-Founder…

Tell us about BeautyShelf

BeautyShelf is the first social beauty shopping app that brings thousands of brands together in one place, so beauty shoppers can shop, save, share, and compare prices through real routines.

Think Instagram meets beauty shopping, but built for the buyer, not the algorithm. BeautyShelf gives consumers a seamless way to shop smarter, creators a way to monetise their influence effortlessly, and brands a powerful new channel to convert inspiration into sales.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

My co-founder Charlotte and I have never worked in beauty, but we’ve shopped it religiously for the past 15 years. We’re the ones constantly trying new products, saving TikToks, taking recommendations from friends, and losing track of screenshots we swore we’d remember later. The whole experience felt messy, fragmented, and full of missed opportunities, and that’s exactly what inspired us to fix it.

Over time, it started to feel like every platform was built for the brands and creators, not the shopper. The industry was so focused on selling that it stopped listening to how people actually want to shop. That’s what sparked BeautyShelf: one space that brings inspiration, recommendation, and purchase together in a single, seamless journey, while giving the shopper the freedom to shop how they want to. A platform that finally puts the shopper at the centre of beauty.

Tell us about your core product or service: BeautyShelf

BeautyShelf is a free mobile app that lets users explore and shop products directly from real routines. You can see what others are using across skincare, haircare, makeup, fragrance, and supplements, then instantly shop those items from trusted retailers, with price comparison built in.

For creators, BeautyShelf automatically turns their existing TikTok or Instagram content into shoppable routines through our built-in API integrations. It’s effortless monetisation for authentic beauty content. And for brands, it’s a data-rich new channel that transforms recommendations into measurable sales.

What most excites you about the beauty tech industry?

What excites me most is the evolving conversation around how AI can make shopping feel more human, which may sound ironic, but in the right hands (ours), it can be done. Beauty has always been built on trust, influence, and community, yet the digital experience hasn’t reflected that. Now, AI and other tech-based features can enable more intuitive, personalised, and emotionally intelligent ways to shop, bringing the feeling of ‘in real life’ discovery online. When community insight meets intelligent technology, that’s where real transformation happens.

 What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

A major challenge has been launching with three key pillars: shoppers, creators, and brands, because our ecosystem is designed to serve them all simultaneously. That means our education has had to be thorough and our messaging incredibly clear, as we’ve had to communicate value from multiple perspectives at once. It’s been a big undertaking, but the most rewarding part has been seeing how quickly people connect with it.  Once people see it, they’re all in.

Another major hurdle was raising the pre-seed investment needed to build the tech and launch our marketing campaigns. It’s no secret that this is an incredibly tough fundraising climate (particularly for women in tech), where only around 3% of female founders successfully raise capital. Despite that, we’re incredibly proud to have closed our pre-seed round earlier this year, a milestone that not only validated our vision but also reinforced the industry’s belief in the need for a platform like BeautyShelf.

What can we hope to see from BeautyShelf in the future?

Our focus is on scaling BeautyShelf into the global home for beauty recommendations, a destination people instinctively turn to before they buy anything beauty-related. We’re creating a space where shoppers can feel confident, inspired, and understood; making it easier to purchase beauty recommendations than ever before.

In the near future, you’ll see BeautyShelf evolve with smarter, shopper-first tools, deeper brand intelligence, and more meaningful creator–brand collaborations that reflect how influence and commerce truly work today. Long-term, our vision is for BeautyShelf to power how beauty is discovered and bought worldwide. We’ll be expanding into new markets, but more importantly, expanding what beauty discovery feels like: personal, intuitive, and community-powered.