The odds of having multiple beauty executives on stage at once whose consumers have gotten tattoos emblematic of their respective brands are slim, but never zero, as evidenced at the 2025 WWD L.A. Beauty Forum.

For Cocokind founder Priscilla Tsai, the tattoos in question happened during a customer brand trip to Miami, where “six out of the eight customers on the trip got impromptu tattoos of a coconut tree and the word ‘kind,’” she said during a panel with Noyz chief executive officer Malena Higuera — who hosts a tattoo artist at the brand’s launch parties — and Arnaud Kerviche, senior vice president of global brand and innovation for NYX Professional Makeup. The panel was hosted by WWD senior beauty editor Kathryn Hopkins.

“I am so much more focused on having 1,000 customers who are absolutely obsessed with us, than having a million who kind of like us,” said Tsai, who personally fronts much of Cocokind’s “edutaining” content on TikTok page, which has more than 172,000 followers.

“We treat our customers like the very important stakeholders they are,” added Higuera of how Noyz seeks to cultivate community among its consumers. For Higuera, this means hosting customer brand trips — Noyz’s third to date happened in October in New York — sending prelaunch mailers to loyal customers, and even allowing customer takeovers on the brand’s Snapchat account.

“I was at the airport [months ago] and observed our target market on Snap and said, ‘alright, let’s try it’ — we got 100,000 followers in four weeks,” said Higuera, adding that Noyz also conducts one-on-one calls with customers via the app for feedback and to foster connection. “The one thing you cannot buy is engagement. You can buy all the views and reach in the world, but if you’ve got an engaged community, that’s going to build sustainable value well beyond a viral moment.”

NYX, on the other hand, is similarly tapped into the wants of its community — and finds virality can often be a side effect of that M.O. For instance this summer, the brand tapped “Love Island” stars Olandria Carthen and Nic Vansteenberghe for a campaign after fans observed Carthen used NYX lip products during her time in the villa.

“The community kept asking for them, and we provided exactly what the community was asking for,” Kerviche said. “Gen Z are very connected, but they’re also very alone…so every time they feel they are seen, then they connect [with a brand].”

For Tsai, comment sections and DMs are key avenues for connection with customers, and Higuera added that communicating via the brand’s Instagram broadcast channel and investing in events have been growth drivers for Noyz.

“Six months ago, we did 16 events in 45 days with a team of six and met 6,000 people,” Higuera said. “The whole team was smarter for it. It’s still a very important experience that we draw from.”