Mighty Patch sold out in 90 days; founder unlocked Amazon Prime by “accident”

The tiny, clear patches are increasingly gracing the faces of Gen Z and millennials when a pimple pops up, and to date over a billion of the brand’s signature hydrocolloid patches have been sold. Manufacturer Hero Cosmetics also recently partnered with content creator Alix Earle.

Founder and CEO Ju Rhyu said Assets She came up with the idea for the brand in 2012 while living as an expat in South Korea and working for Samsung. At the time, there were only two types of hydrocolloid patches in the K-beauty industry: medical and cosmetic. The entrepreneur wanted to fill this gap and bring pimple patches to the US, as she saw an opportunity in the $3.9 billion K-beauty industry.

So in 2017, when she was 37, Rhyu launched her brand with co-founders Dwight Lee and Andrew Lee, capitalizing on their entrepreneurial expertise and a whopping $50,000 the trio had pooled together.

After agreeing that Mighty Patch needed to be cash flow positive and profitable, the trio began looking for a manufacturer. Rhyu compiled a list of potential business partners and told the Female Startup Club that she discovered the companies by looking at the boxes of acne patches in a local pharmacy.

Of the 10 manufacturers Rhyu contacted via email, only two responded. She said the final match was “luck” and Hero Cosmetics still works with the manufacturer today. Rhyu says the manufacturer makes “the highest quality patch in Korea.”

The big start

Armed with a business partner and a mission to shake up the band-aid department, Hero received its first order for 10,000 units.

In 2017, Hero began selling the Mighty Patch, including on e-commerce giant Amazon, but the company initially failed to get the product listed on Amazon Prime, where members can increase orders by 25% by getting free shipping and other perks.

The breakthrough came after some trial and error.

“The pricing was actually kind of an accident because we were selling on Amazon,” Rhyu said. “There were already some vendors that were much cheaper, like $5. And they wanted to offer our products for $9.99. But the funny thing is, we couldn’t get Amazon Prime. And we played around with different things to see how we could unlock Prime. And one of the ways was to raise our price to $12.99.”

Rhyu decided to stick with the new price tag after the sale closed in just 90 days. And in 2022, she led a $630 million acquisition with Church & Dwight.

Entry into the beauty industry

Pimple patches may have only recently become a beauty staple for Americans, but they have been around in South Korea since the early 2010s.

When Hero Cosmetics first launched in the U.S., Rhyu says there were few competitors on Amazon. Today, the cosmetics industry is awash with pimple patches of all kinds. Brands like Starface have introduced bright colors and cloud and star shapes to the cosmetics aisle, while Neutrogena and CosRX have developed their own translucent hydrocolloid discs.

But Rhyu says that by choosing to keep the patches discreet, Hero can reach a wider customer base.

Rhyu also attributes Hero’s success to its special formula: “When they use our products compared to the competition, I think they notice the difference.” She adds that Hero’s expertise in the acne patch category has created a lot of trust and is one of the reasons why the company remains number one to this day.

“We want to be very inclusive and appeal to everyone, from 14-year-olds to people in their 50s,” she says, adding that bright shapes and colors may be fun for younger generations, “but they don’t work for everyone.”

Rhyu says her success is not based on her company’s sales, but on changing public perceptions around acne.

She cites social media as a key factor in Hero Cosmetics’ popularity, highlighting the virality of the “peel-off” when content creators remove their Mighty Patch and reveal the “goo” underneath.

“This type of content often goes viral, and that virality helps educate,” she says. “Social media has obviously been critical to the success of our business.”

She says she is “proud” when customers wear the product in public, as Hero aims to make acne “more acceptable.”

“I love it when people wear them to the office or just for fun,” she says. “To me, that means we’ve done our job, that we’ve really broken the taboo around acne and made it OK.”