One often finds themselves at the make-up counter, spending hours swatching, second-guessing, and settling for something that’s just slightly off. Some might find their perfect shade but for others, it’s a matter of availability. Their exact match simply doesn’t exist on the shelf, dismissed as too “niche” for brands to prioritise. It’s a quiet but persistent gap in the beauty industry, where entire undertones and skin tones are overlooked.
And that’s exactly the gap Monica Ravichandran set out to address.
Monica Ravichandran built her platform by explaining what the beauty industry often overlooks. With a background in engineering and product management, she approaches beauty through data, breaking down why products behave differently across skin tones and why undertones matter just as much as depth.
Her Lipstick Colour Theory content reframed how consumers understand shade matching, particularly for brown and olive skin tones that are frequently misrepresented or excluded. That work has since moved beyond content and into product development.
This year, Ravichandran launched two co-developed products: a cushion foundation with Espoir featuring four olive shades, and a Lip + Liner Duo with Fwee. Both projects reflect a more deliberate approach to shade development, shaped by community feedback and research.
We spoke with Ravichandran about the process behind both collaborations and what still needs to change.
You’re launching two co-developed products with Espoir and Fwee almost back-to-back. What made this the right moment to bring these collaborations to market?
Yeah, so it wasn’t the right moment. I think the thing about Korean beauty brands, like Asian beauty brands in general, is that they work on insane timelines. The free collab I was supposed to do was supposed to launch last year, and it kept getting pushed out because they had a bunch of changes on their team. Then they had some production delays, kind of the usual stuff that, like, labs and manufacturers have, so they just kept getting pushed out.’
And then it just so happened that it wasn’t like, “Oh, we’re going to launch these two back-to-back on purpose.” I actually think it ended up being a good thing, because it’s kind of funny, like they both are completely different products, completely different brands, completely different vibes. So they pair well together. So there are a lot of views for sorry, and a lot of reviews from people being like, “Oh, I’m gonna try both of these at the same time.” They complement each other, which is really funny. I didn’t know whether I wanted it to happen that way. No, I would have loved to give both collabs their own time to shine. But with delays like that and the way launches work, it wasn’t really in my control.
With Espoir, you focused on creating four olive-toned shades for the cushion foundation, a rarity in K-beauty. What gaps did you identify early on that you wanted this launch to address?
So they originally already had two shades. And what’s funny is, when they came to me, they wanted me to make my shade like only one. So they were going to extend it to one shade.
But my shade was close enough to something that they already had. So I did a market analysis to see, like, what other shades that I could make with them that would be beneficial to the community. So the Espoir launch is less about doing it for me and more about serving my community and the olive skin community to help fill a market gap.
And some data I found showed that fair olive foundations were among the top searches on Google Trends and TikTok Creator Search Insights. And even YouTube gives you search term data, and that showed me it was a consistently trending term people were trying to find.
Additionally, I reviewed all of MUA’s Reddit threads to identify the real gaps and what people were discussing, and I conducted my own AI analysis. And that was when I discovered the gaps were, like, fair olive and deep olive.
Medium olive, lighter than me, like a light-medium olive, is catered towards, somewhat. Brands will come out with one olive shade and call it a day, but all of this, really, like, it’s a normal undertone. A lot of people are made to feel like it’s niche, but it’s not. It’s the fair olive shade, sold out in four days, and it’s restocking February 10, so that tells you my data was correct.
What did co-development actually look like day to day on the Espoir cushion foundation, and where did you have the most influence?
So when they first came to me, it was like December of 2023, and again, they wanted to make me my shade. But then, after evaluating all the shades that they had, I had pitched to them doing a deep olive and a fair olive shade extension with analysis. So that was the first step they took to take that data to the CEO of Espoir. So, Espoir is owned by Amour Pacific. So, like, everyone had essentially touched that data, which was crazy, and then they approved it because they saw its value.
After that, they flew me to Korea. I went, visited the Amour Pacific labs, and then worked with their PD team on-site and their chemists to help develop, like, the other two shades they already had. And to make it, make sure that they were true olives; they have technology tools that, like, kind of help measure the amount of pigments to kind of show that, like, there is a balance of yellow and black pigment.
Because if you look at what olive skin is, it is where the pheomelanin is, which leans more yellow. But then you have eumelanin, which is brown or black, and when you mix yellow with brown or black, it makes a khaki colour. So it makes a greenish tone. So that’s how I approach development for these shades.
And, of course, we went through the benchmarking process, but I wanted to create shades that didn’t exist in the market. So, you have your benchmarking process, but I wanted to look at the problems people faced with the current shades on the market and address them based on their concerns.
After that, though, I didn’t get to the end of it yet, sorry. But after, like, the shades, I went to Korea, I wanted to make like, lighting plays a huge difference, especially with complexion products. So we went back and forth on the two shade samples for three or four months, and they sent me between 15 and 20 shade samples.
I tried it on actual human skin to make sure that, like, people, this actually, like, matched someone’s shades, you know, because I’m making shades that are not for me.
TLDR, we went through a lot of sample processes. The problem in the beauty industry is that they’re not shade-matching to actual human skin. They’re just copying other people’s foundations and calling it a day. So I want to make sure that some people match the foundations. So I had friends try it. I might have family members who are around the shade, because I have a lot of olive-skinned community members who are willing to help.
And once I got my like data that these were really good shades, they put it into production. I actually helped with the entire marketing plan, and that’s something a lot of people don’t know. I was the one who suggested doing the true olive shades.
We also did a full photo shoot in LA with all four shades. And that’s when we strategise the marketing plan. They had a couple of content ideas that they wanted on their end, but on my end, I wanted to make sure that, like, people knew that this was more than just for me, right?
Because that’s the thing with influencer collabs, a lot of times it’s for that person. But I wanted to make sure this wasn’t just for me.
And then once, like, a lot of people were giving feedback, like I saw all the reviews, and everyone, like, loved it. Do we need more olive shades? Absolutely. Like, if I had the chance to make 10 or 15, I would have loved to do that, but this is still the right start in the right direction.
What do you hope these collaborations signal for the future of inclusiveness?
I want more brands to take creator feedback a little more seriously. What’s the word constructive? I don’t think every creator has the want, nor the experience, to be able to go into the lab and have, like, an educated opinion on what needs to happen there, right?
Like, I think more creators who have more niche audiences, maybe who are experts in a certain community, should be given opportunities to be able to help behind the scenes, to be able to serve an audience that are underrepresented because it like, I think a lot of beauty brands fail nowadays because they’re not looking at what the problem is in the market. It’s already a really saturated market.
They’re just doing what everyone else is doing, thinking it’s going to work, but that’s not how business works.
Ravichandran’s work reflects a shift toward a more deliberate approach to beauty, one that considers not only shade depth but also undertone, application, and real-world use, promoting exclusivity inside the beauty industry. As more creators move into development roles, expectations are changing. Products are no longer judged solely on launch or visibility, but on whether they meet the needs they claim to address, because everybody deserves a shade.
