Made by Mitchell: Worth the Hype, or Just A Very Good Scam?

It was the first UK beauty brand to sell a million pounds in a day on TikTok. I bought it. Here is what actually happened.

If you have spent any time on beauty TikTok, you have seen the neon green packaging. Made by Mitchell is everywhere, and for a while I could not work out whether that was because the makeup was brilliant or because the marketing machine behind it never sleeps. So I bought some and found out.

THE RECORD IS REAL

Made by Mitchell was founded in 2020 by Bolton-born makeup artist Mitchell Halliday. In June 2024, as part of TikTok Shop's Summer Sale, he hosted a twelve-hour live from Manchester that sold roughly one product every second and brought in around $830,000 during the stream alone. Sales carried on after the broadcast ended, and within twenty-four hours the brand had passed a million dollars. No UK beauty business had done that before.

That number is not a marketing invention. It has been reported independently and confirmed by TikTok Shop itself, and the brand went on to project around £40 million in TikTok Shop sales for 2024 and more than £50 million across all channels.

SO NO, IT IS NOT A SCAM

This matters, because "TikTok brand" has become shorthand for something dropshipped from a warehouse that will not answer your emails. Made by Mitchell is not that. It is stocked in Boots in the UK and Priceline in Australia, it opened a physical store in Liverpool, and in early 2026 it launched into around 700 Ulta Beauty stores in the US. Retailers of that size do not hand over shelf space without checking a brand's supply chain, safety documentation and returns record first.

The founder's story is also more interesting than the usual influencer cash-in. The brand was reportedly close to closure in early 2022 before TikTok Shop turned it around. That is a genuine business, built fast and under pressure, and the speed is relevant to everything that follows.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOOD

The praise from independent reviewers is remarkably consistent, and it clusters around one product line: Blursh. It is a liquid blush and bronzer that dries down to a powder finish, and reviewers describe it as heavily pigmented, easy to blend and long-wearing, with the £14 to £16 price justified by how little you need per application. The pressed Blursh formula gets similar marks for swatching evenly with a single pass.

The shade range is genuinely broad, the products are cruelty-free, and the colour choices are more adventurous than most high-street brands dare to be. If bold blush is your thing, the hero products have earned their following honestly.

WHERE IT FALLS DOWN

The range has grown very quickly, and the quality has not kept pace across all of it. Complexion products are the weak spot, and that is where my own experience sits.

The formula I tried went on cakey. It sat on top of my skin rather than melting into it, clinging to every dry patch, and no amount of warming it up or layering it thinly fixed that. After a few weeks I also started breaking out, which has not happened with anything else in my routine.

I am not alone in this. One long-term customer who owns fifteen to twenty products praised the innovation and the price point but found several formulas lacklustre and patchy. A reviewer in 2026 described a complexion kit as far too sticky and impossible to blend. The pattern is specific: the blushes, bronzers and liners hold up, and the base products do not.

THE BIGGER PROBLEM IS NOT THE MAKEUP

Made by Mitchell's Trustpilot score sits at roughly two out of five across around 390 reviews. Read them and the complaints are overwhelmingly about fulfilment rather than formulas: wrong shades sent, items missing from bundles, refunds taking weeks, and customers bounced back and forth between TikTok Shop and the brand over whose responsibility an order is.

Some perspective is fair here. Trustpilot attracts people with a grievance, and 390 reviews set against tens of millions of pounds in sales is a very small sample. But the complaints are consistent enough, and recent enough, to take seriously before you order.

SKIP THE MYSTERY BUNDLES

The mystery bundles are the single most complained-about item. Customers report receiving duplicates within the same order, three identical bundles bought together, and products they had already purchased in that same transaction. Even reviewers who liked the brand overall flagged getting two of the same item in the same shade.

That is what a mystery bag is for. It is an inventory-clearing mechanism dressed up as a treat, and there is nothing dishonest about that as long as you go in knowing it. Just do not mistake it for a discovery set.

THE VERDICT

Made by Mitchell is a real brand making some genuinely good products and some distinctly average ones, sold through a marketing operation engineered to stop you thinking too hard about which is which. The live-selling format is the point: the countdown, the flash discount and the host packing your order on camera all exist to compress the gap between wanting something and buying it.

If you want to try it, buy from Boots rather than a live. Same products, you can see exactly what you are getting, the returns process actually works, and you sidestep almost every complaint above. Start with a single Blursh in a shade you have looked at properly, and be sceptical of the complexion range until the formulas settle down.

The million-dollar day was real. That does not mean everything in the basket is.