The Creator Behind Peachmilk Co.
By: Tia Monté
Tags: Black Women, Cosmetics, Business, Aesthetics, Kpop

During this time of quarantine and online schooling, students have been staying home and using social media to connect with their friends and the rest of the world. In the midst of Zoom classes and handing in assignments at the last minute, Kpop fans, in particular, have found and developed hobbies outside of the genre and used their talents to make some profit. Christelle is one of them, a 21-year-old nurse in training from the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, who decided to use her free time to start a business and discovered a lifelong passion for her online beauty and cosmetic company, Peachmilk.

When battling COVID-19, Christelle decided to launch her own lip gloss brand after spending her time in isolation watching Youtube videos. “I worked with myself and Youtube, and Google, literally,” she said while explaining her process of starting Peachmilk. “I just researched on my own and started off finding out about the lip gloss business community on Youtube, and then I got vendors for that. I started going on Google to see what’s the best moisturizer for lips and in terms of my accessories, I searched jewelry vendors, and thankfully the first one that popped up was the right one for me.”

Revolving around a pastel pink aesthetic, she sells lip gloss, jewelry, and hair accessories for “the girls, the gays, and the theys!” Through her Kpop stan account on Twitter, she is able to promote her business all while remaining her true introverted self.

“Twitter is good for helping things like that gain traction,” she said when discussing her marketing strategies. “Most of my active following is on Twitter, I have a lot of my friends on there, people who genuinely support me and things like that.”

Even after receiving criticism about posting her views on politics and promoting her business on her stan account, Christelle thought that Kpop stan Twitter was the perfect place to start marketing her brand. “Kpop stan Twitter is one of the best fandoms interaction wise. They’re super active, they’re nice for the most part and support. When they do buy, they’ll post a picture saying ‘Please shop from @ triviaspeach or Peachmilk Co’ etc, so that’s the way they support.”

As a Kpop fan, Christelle had subtly incorporated parts of the music genre into her products and established a color scheme that attracted Kpop stans. “Most of my lip gloss names, if you really check for it you’ll see its song titles to certain artists and things that remind me of an idol or a group,” she said. “I end up getting customers who also like Kpop. I feel like Kpop stans always gravitate toward a certain aesthetic. Whether it’s a Murakami theme, a colorful aesthetic, or more plant, pink, soft kind of vibe.”

On her first week of sales, she received forty-two orders in total, thirty-nine of which were from Twitter alone, and made almost one-thousand dollars. “I was expecting to get like some orders,” she said. “People you meet online. they have a mentality like ‘let me buy from this person, let me support them, let me do this, get them engagements’ etc. When I first started I knew Twitter was gon’ help me out and Twitter did, Twitter came through!”

Christelle’s presence on stan Twitter has gotten Peachmilk a lot of traction, and she vouches for people who want to start their businesses to market to Kpop stans. “I think stan Twitter is a really good passageway for promoting your business though and getting a base audience for your business.” Additionally, some of the friends she met through stan Twitter have also helped with her business endeavors. One friend, in particular, Chey, assisted in the first iteration of Peachmilk’s logo design. “I love her so much! She was a great help in the creative process as well. She actually made my first logo for the brand and even when I changed it she was still supportive in that too.”

As Christelle uses her Twitter and Instagram to promote Peachmilk Co, she hopes in the future to expand her product line and gain more foot traction on her page. “I’m hoping sales-wise to at least get 10 orders a day and in the long run, I want to have constant revenue. I’m also thinking of dropping a palette soon, but don’t tell nobody!”

Christelle is very thankful for all of the support she’s been receiving these past months after starting her business and wants to continue to unleash her creativity through her brand. By being someone’s first, or next, lip gloss purchase, she hopes to continue her side hobby turned passion for months and years to come.

Christelle can be found at @peachmilk.co on Instagram, @peachmilkco on Twitter, and her website peachmilkco.shop.