Amy Liu grew Tower 28 by seeding 100 hand-labeled prototype units to friends and letting customer responses define the product's use cases and marketing before any paid channels. She launched directly into all Sephora doors in March 2020, leaning on 20 years of retail relationships, and accelerated during COVID by seeding essential workers and nurses for mask-related skin issues. Putting her own eczema story at the center of brand messaging was the turning point that made the brand resonate.

“It wasn't until I put myself in the story that I really felt like I could see like the light bulb turn on and that people could relate to it and understand it a little bit more.”

“I had put it out there for so many years and I didn't even know it. And I think so often we have hopes and dreams and we keep them to ourselves because we're afraid to share them... when I went to go do it, so many people were like, 'You've been saying you wanted to do this. We've been waiting for you to do this.'”

“We would seed essential workers. We would seed nurses and this was just being online.”

“I really thought the need gap was in makeup because there are a lot of skincare brands that have sensitive skin kind of products... I really wanted to cover my skin imperfections but I really worried that when I used complexion products that it was making my skin worse.”

Amy Liu built Tower 28 through scrappy, personalized influencer outreach (cold-sending PR with handwritten notes to YouTubers whose PO boxes she scraped manually), leveraging 20 years of retailer relationships to land Sephora within months of launch, and aggressively amplifying organic social moments rather than outspending competitors. Her operating principle was 'out clever' over outspend: each individual community interaction (a before/after from an essential worker, a celebrity mention) was captured and scaled into broader press and social proof.

“I would write to Chriselle Lim, be like, 'Chriselle, I think you would love this product because your daughters or whatever it is and I know you're a mom and you're busy, so I think that you'll love this'”

“Haley Bieber talked about us organically, which I almost fell down. I was like, 'How did this happen?'”

“somebody can outspend us, but can we out clever them? Is there a way that we can just be more thoughtful about what we're putting out there?”

“great marketing is a short-term solution. Great product is a long-term thing”

Amy Liu built Tower 28 by prioritizing organic community over paid influencer spend, using a social listening audit to discover and double down on her actual over-indexing audiences (acne-prone, Latin, and athlete consumers). She formed brand and product collaborations only when there was genuine product-audience fit and real personal relationships, and relied on earned media desk-sides to surface the founder story that drove early press.

“We did a social listening study recently where we had someone come in and literally just scrub the entire internet for like social comments, for reviews, for anything that we could to try to understand who our customer is. And what we found is that we overindex in people who have acne, who are Latin, and specifically who play sports and are athletes.”

“The best collaborations are the ones that speak to the audience in a way that feel really organic.”

“I've also had celebrities come to me and say, 'I'd like to be your chief creative officer.' And I'm like, I've never seen you post or talk about us, so why would — if you don't truly love it, like why would we do it?”

“It wasn't until we started doing desk sides with editors and talking about the brand and they were like, 'Why didn't you tell us that?' And that was when I realized, oh, people actually care about like the story behind the story.”

Amy Liu built Tower 28 around her personal pain point (eczema + 22 years in beauty) and validated the hero product by seeding 100 unmarked bottles to real users with sensitive skin before launch. Her brand identity is rooted in an authentic LA/beach lifestyle, though she initially hid her own face from the website because she doubted customers would connect her identity to that aesthetic.

“I've had eczema my entire adult life and the combination of those two things is actually kind of hard because I really felt like I was the person trying to sell beauty products to you know the retailers and to the customer but yet my own skin was so problematic.”

“One of the things I really wanted to do with Tower 28 is to make products that were not only clean but also safe for sensitive skin.”

“In the very beginning when I launched Tower 28 I intentionally did not show my own picture on our website because we have this very beachy concept and growing up I really thought that people felt like that was associated with like a blond hair blue-eyed girl.”

“I truly do believe that our products are that crosshair between being good for your skin safe and also high performance.”