Lauren Ireland and Marianna Hewitt, cofounders of Summer Fridays, Photo Credit: Anna Sokol

Photo Credit: Anna Sokol

Summer Fridays launched in 2018 with a single product: Jet Lag Mask. At the time, cofounders Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland were told a moisturizing mask wasn’t disruptive enough to launch an entire brand.

Eight years and five product categories later, Summer Fridays has evolved into a beauty powerhouse spanning skincare, lip care, hybrid makeup, fragrance, and sun care, all tied together by a singular emotion: the feeling of summer.

“When we were creating the name for the brand, we wanted a name that felt like a feeling,” Hewitt shared over Zoom last week. “We never wanted skincare to feel like something you had to do in the morning. We wanted it to feel like a ritual you looked forward to.”

And since May can be considered “the Friday of summer” (as the kickoff to the season), it’s fitting that the brand is launching new products this month designed to deepen its world of ease, warmth and optimism.

Summer Fridays is expanding its bestselling Butter Balm franchise with the debut of Bronzer Butter Balm, alongside ShadeDrops Broad Spectrum SPF 50 Mineral Milk Sunscreen, an upgraded version of its SPF 30 formula.

“How can we bring this feeling and sense of joy into what would otherwise be a very normal, maybe boring part of your day?” Ireland added.

“It’s your everyday exhale.”

But the bigger story isn’t bronzer or sunscreen. It’s how Summer Fridays transformed emotional branding into business scale.

At a time when creator-founded beauty brands launch almost weekly, longevity and sustained retail success have become far rarer than virality. Summer Fridays, however, has managed to evolve beyond the “influencer brand” label entirely.

Today, the company is the #1 ranked skincare brand at Sephora according to YipitData’s 2025 U.S. sales rankings, while also holding seven of Sephora’s top 10 skincare SKUs. Its Lip Butter Balm became the #1 prestige lip product in the U.S., with one balm now selling every two seconds globally.

The company also saw double-digit global retail sales growth in 2025 following international expansion into more than 830 Sephora EU doors across 15 countries.

Summer Fridays isn’t simply skincare, it’s about anticipation as branding.

“Owning summer” has become a strategic framework for the company, influencing everything from formulas and packaging to partnerships and retail experiences.

“We have this filter that we look at everything through,” Hewitt explained. “Summer is about ease, effortlessness, joy, and warmth. With every product, we try to hit at least some of those things.”

“Although our products are efficacious, we’re not a clinical or dermatologist brand. It should feel like a lifestyle product that’s easy to use, enjoyable and intuitive.”

That philosophy extends beyond formulas. In many ways, Summer Fridays understood earlier than most beauty brands that products no longer lived solely on bathroom counters or retail shelves. They lived inside Instagram grids, airport security trays, beach bags, and creator ecosystems.

The founders were designing objects optimized for modern digital behavior.

For the launch of Bronzer Butter Balm, the brand seeded creators with Away carry-ons packed with bronzers, towels, hats, and Havaianas. The campaign reinforced a concept that has existed since the early days of Jet Lag Mask: escape.

“Jet Lag Mask became skincare that wasn’t just in the bathroom, but traveled with you,” Hewitt said. “People took it on vacation and on flights, which led us to our branded TSA bins and thinking about the travel aspect of summer.”

That transportation fantasy helped transform the now-iconic aluminum tube into one of the most recognizable beauty products of the Instagram era.

“When we started working on the brand, Instagram Stories didn’t even exist yet,” Hewitt said. “Lauren and I curated our feeds carefully, so we thought about what would actually look beautiful online.”

At the time, most face masks came packaged in jars. The founders instead opted for a sleek blue aluminum tube; a design choice that immediately stood out on social feeds and helped the product spread organically across beauty culture.

“When Jet Lag Mask launched in 2018, you almost couldn’t open Instagram without seeing that blue tube,” Hewitt recalled.

The company still approaches product development through the lens of visual culture, portability and everyday usability.

“We still talk internally about, ‘How do we create the aluminum tube of today?’” Ireland added. “We always want things to feel innovative and shareable while still being practical and easy to use.”

That mindset helped fuel another defining Summer Fridays moment: Hewitt’s Coconut Cloud smoothie collaboration with Erewhon, widely credited as one of the first truly viral beauty-adjacent smoothies. Four years later, it remains on Erewhon menus across Los Angeles.

“With the smoothie, it wasn’t the first collaboration Erewhon had done, but it was one of the first that was designed to be visually beautiful and shareable,” Hewitt said. “That’s why I think it went viral.”

Today, consumers travel from around the world to try it.

“What it really showed us is that people love the lifestyle and the feeling they’re entering that isn’t just the beauty product itself,” Ireland explained.

The collaboration also demonstrated how modern beauty brands increasingly operate beyond traditional product categories, extending into hospitality, travel, wellness, and experiential culture. Increasingly, brands are competing not just for shelf space, but for “TSA bin space,” “car makeup bag space” and “camera roll space.”

That shift has fundamentally changed modern beauty branding. Products now need to function not only as efficacious formulas, but as ritual objects, status signals and shareable experiences.

Nearly a decade after first conceptualizing the company before Instagram Stories even existed, Hewitt and Ireland have built something far bigger than a skincare line. One Jet Lag Mask now sells every minute globally, while the brand’s products live everywhere from Sephora shelves to airport security trays and Erewhon selfies alike.

In an increasingly crowded beauty market, Summer Fridays’ greatest competitive advantage may not be a hero product at all. It’s the clarity of the feeling the brand sells — and how consistently consumers want to return to it.