For over 25 years, tarte cosmetics, the #1 concealer and mascara brand in the world*, has built its business by spotting what’s next and moving quickly to bring it to life.
As the brand grew, it needed a commerce platform that could keep pace. That’s why the brand moved tarte.com to Shopify. To give its teams more control over launches, campaigns and the shopping experience, the beauty brand moved tarte.com to Shopify in roughly five months.
Within hours of launch, marketing was back on; within the first week, the new site supported a major collaboration spanning digital and retail.
The move gives tarte a simpler way to bring ideas to market while supporting the personalized beauty experience its tartelettes expect.
*Source: Circana, LLC, U.S. Prestige Beauty Total Measured Market, Makeup Mascara by Brand, Dollar; Unit Sales, January-December 2025
At a glance results
- Custom Kit, tarte’s signature build-your-own beauty event, delivered record-breaking results and brought more new customers to the brand than ever before.
- AOV increased by more than 10%.
- Checkout conversion increased by more than 20%.
- Estimated platform costs decreased by 75%.
The challenge
Moving at the speed of tarte
tarte.com is the brand’s digital flagship, bringing product launches, collaborations, creator partnerships and major brand moments to life. On its previous platform, even routine updates, tests and integrations often required specialized development support, limiting how quickly teams could respond to new ideas and changing customer behavior.
With TikTok Shop growing and international expansion accelerating, tarte needed a more flexible commerce foundation - one that gave its teams greater control over campaigns, content and merchandising without compromising the personalized beauty experience tartelettes expected.
The solution
Choosing Shopify to match tarte's pace
Shopify’s investments in social commerce, personalization and AI-powered shopping aligned with how tarte expected customer behavior to evolve.
Following an extensive evaluation, tarte cosmetics founder and CEO Maureen Kelly selected Shopify for its pace of innovation and ability to support tarte’s ambitions across DTC, TikTok Shop and emerging commerce channels.
tarte began evaluating ecommerce platforms in October, selected Shopify in December, started technical development in January and launched in June. To move quickly while building long-term expertise internally, tarte partnered with CQL through a co-development model.
CQL worked alongside tarte's technology, product, merchandising and user-experience teams, helping them develop their Shopify capabilities while building the new storefront together.
We set an aggressive five-month timeline, and our teams delivered without compromising the customer experience. It took true partnership across tarte, Shopify and CQL.
The operating model received the same attention as the technology. Before launch, tarte established clear ownership across product, engineering, merchandising, ecommerce operations, quality assurance and order management. Those responsibilities were refined after launch as teams built confidence on Shopify.
Giving teams more control
On Shopify, tarte’s merchandising and ecommerce teams can manage more day-to-day changes directly, test new ideas and respond faster to customer behavior.
Shopify provides the flexible commerce foundation, while Visually.io helps tarte combine its merchandising expertise with algorithmic product recommendations. Together, they create a more relevant shopping experience that has helped drive more than 10% growth in average order value.
The redesigned site pairs greater speed and flexibility with the high-touch beauty features, including before-and-after videos, virtual try-on, shade finding, quizzes, personalized routine bundles, product recommendations and sample selection.
The results
Returning the focus to tartelettes and growth
Shopify provided a stable foundation from day one, allowing tarte to quickly return its focus to launching products, engaging customers and driving growth. Within hours of launch, the brand resumed email, SMS and other marketing activity.
Within the first week, Shopify powered the digital experience behind a major omnichannel collaboration, launched alongside a full 360-degree marketing campaign and in-store retail activation.
A customized landing page and reusable content modules, designed around tarte’s specific brand and creative needs, allowed teams to bring the campaign to life quickly and consistently across the customer journey.
Making checkout faster and more familiar
During tarte's recent Friends & Family event on Shopify, checkout conversion increased by more than 20% compared with the prior year's event. Shop Pay became tarte's leading payment method, representing more than half of transactions. Its familiar, accelerated checkout experience proved especially valuable for returning customers.
Shop Pay removes friction for returning customers and makes checkout feel fast and familiar. More than half of our transactions now go through Shop Pay, which shows how much customers value that convenience.
Creating a simpler path to international growth
International expansion was a core architectural consideration from the start. tarte launched new U.S. and international storefronts on Shopify and selected ESW as its merchant-of-record partner. With ESW managing localized checkout and much of the complexity of cross-border commerce, tarte simplified the operational work required to support its international business.
Moving to Shopify and ESW has allowed our team to spend less time on backend updates and more time growing the business. That shift has helped drive more than 40% growth in our international business year to date.
Powering the #1 beauty brand on TikTok Shop
As the #1 cosmetics brand on TikTok Shop since 2023, tarte faced significant risk in replatforming tarte.com while keeping TikTok Shop operating - two major direct-to-consumer revenue channels. Shopify’s native TikTok integration enabled real-time catalog, inventory and order syncing, helping tarte bring both channels back online and fully operational within two hours of launch.
TikTok Shop continues to give tarte a discovery-led commerce channel with a customer base distinct from tarte.com. The channel acquires new customers at more than twice the rate of tarte.com, with no observed cannibalization of the brand’s DTC site.
Building for growth in an AI-driven future
Shopify provides tarte with a more flexible technical foundation for AI-powered commerce. Product information, pricing and inventory can flow directly into connected AI shopping channels without custom feeds or development-heavy integrations, while orders return to Shopify with clear attribution.
That foundation allows tarte to spend less time building technical integrations and more time identifying opportunities for growth. Product and merchandising teams can prioritize the information that will improve visibility in LLMs, strengthen product data and create content that helps customers discover the right products.
tarte is already measuring its visibility across generative search and aligning product data, PR and site content around the factors that improve discovery. The brand began generating AI-attributed sales even before launching a paid marketing strategy, reinforcing the potential of the channel.
A foundation built for what comes next
Shopify gives tarte a stable commerce foundation today and a partner that continues to build for what comes next. With greater visibility into customer behavior and more flexibility across channels, tarte can respond faster, personalize more of the shopping experience, test smarter and scale the opportunities that drive growth and resonate with tartelettes.
tarte continues to innovate by staying close to our customers, adapting early and scaling what resonates. Shopify helps us maintain that advantage as customer expectations and shopping behaviors evolve.