Aliett Buttelman had just plopped down on the couch after a vigorous hot yoga class on a Monday night in October when she got an urgent message from an Instagram friend: Turn on the football game—and fast. Since her significant other was already watching the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New Orleans Saints across the room, it didn’t take long for Buttelman, co-founder of the beauty startup Fazit, to see what the big deal was. Taylor Swift, who was at the event supporting her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, was wearing Fazit’s signature product, a spattering of glittering freckles, right there on national TV.
Almost immediately, news outlets started to post about Swift’s whimsical makeup, but few mentioned the brand behind the product. So Buttelman fired off emails to every style reporter she could find, explaining that the world famous musician had used a Fazit press-on makeup patch—called “speckles”—and it wasn’t a paid promotion. “Every second counts right now, because we have to let the world know that Taylor is wearing our stuff,” recalls her co-founder, Nina LaBruna, who raced to shore up inventory (luckily, they’d just placed a restocking order) and make sure their manufacturer could start producing more patches ASAP in case demand took off. It did: Within 48 hours, sales of the makeup freckles, then sold on Fazit’s website and Amazon.com, exploded to more than $1 million—a 3,500% spike.