Gloss, Grit & Going Viral w/ Anna Sarelly
Get to Know the #1 Premium Beauty Influencer in Mexico
February 20th, 2025 • 7 min read
At 17, Anna Sarelly was just a girl in Tijuana filming makeup tutorials because there wasn’t enough beauty content in Spanish that spoke to Latinas with real Latin features. Fast forward over a decade and she’s more than a beauty influencer, she’s the Founder of SARELLY SARELLY, the first premium beauty and fashion brand for the Hispanic Gen Z.
It All Started with YouTube
Born and raised in Tijuana, Anna grew up straddling two worlds - Mexican at heart but heavily influenced by American media. Consuming content in both English and Spanish, she quickly realized something was missing.
“Everything you consume is from the US because you get the radio from the US… you get a YouTube and you get the algorithm from the US, so it's weird. I loved watching YouTube makeup tutorials but every tutorial was for Americans… blue colored eyes and blonde [hair].”
In 2008, Anna launched her YouTube channel “just for fun” to create content for Latinas who, like her, felt unseen in beauty. Her channel took off, and what started as a hobby quickly turned into a full-time job, amassing a loyal audience of 5 million followers and making her Mexico’s #1 premium beauty influencer with over 400+ beauty tutorials.
Building a Brand
Launching a brand while still working as a content creator wasn’t easy. Every cent SARELLY SARELLY earned had to be reinvested, and Anna quickly realized there were no days off. Balancing both worlds felt impossible, until she found a way to merge them.
Instead of treating content creation and business as separate things, she used her platform to document the raw, behind-the-scenes reality of building a brand. The messy moments, the small-warehouse hustle, the real struggles of launching products - it all became part of the story.
That unfiltered transparency hit hard with her audience.
By 2022, SARELLY SARELLY had officially launched, starting with luxury cactus leather handbags before expanding into vegan, genderless makeup made for Latin features.
SARELLY quickly became a cult-favorite among Hispanic Gen Z, selling out launches and racking up Gold at the TikTok Ad Awards Mexico 2024 for “Food For The Soul colección de makeup.”
But beyond the products, the brand speaks the language of its audience: “Latin humor, it's not the same humor as like here in the US, so I want that little joke, and that little meme that doesn't maybe make no sense here, but it actually makes sense for us!”
Lip Gloss Glitter-Gate:
Not everything has gone smoothly. One of SARELLY’s early lip gloss launches was a complete disaster.
The packaging didn’t work. The glitter spilled everywhere. The reviews were brutal.
But instead of covering it up, Anna turned the disaster into viral content.
“[I] started the video, ‘We fucked up, we're a small brand…this is wrong, what you thought - I thought it too, but I already have like 5,000 pieces there, dude I need to sell! I need my money back!’ But we came reinforced … ‘Look at this - we made these changes, we made this packaging and look at that - no more glitter!’… it was viral, huge success, more than 1 million likes … so being honest with your audience helps a lot and that's how I leverage, like not necessarily the brand has to be that raw, but I can. I'm just a person. So that's the way we leverage both of them.”
PR, But Make It Personal
Traditional beauty brands flood influencers with mass-produced PR boxes, hoping for a post, a mention, or a fleeting unboxing. But at SARELLY SARELLY, PR isn’t about pushing products, it’s about creating moments influencers actually want to share.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, every PR drop is intentional:
Tailored picks - influencers receive shades they’ll actually wear.
Thoughtful gifting - no wasted products, no clutter.
Refresh the list - review which influencers are likely to use the products.
Reusable packaging - because a good PR box shouldn’t end up in the trash.
Special editions for launches available for customers - why should influencers have all the fun?
Sarelly’s strategy doesn’t involve buying exposure, it’s about making PR feel personal:
“We only do gifting, we don't pay because we're a small brand right now… I’ve been on both sides. I've been just a content creator, a blogger, and brands send me stuff and I know when it’s genuine. They don't pay me, but i wanna like…blow this [up]…it feels personalized …like of course I'll do it…[but] there's some things that I have ton of it, so repeated, and it's like trash… I mean I'm really grateful, but I have like eight more of those from the eight past months…What we always try to do [at SARELLY SARELLY] is let them pick!”
And that’s exactly why Hispanic Gen Z connects with SARELLY SARELLY: it speaks their language, both in beauty and in culture. It’s relatable, unfiltered, and proudly Latin, proving that authenticity isn’t just a trendy buzzword, it’s what sells.
Get your hands on their bestselling Long Cow Lashes Mascara designed for stubbornly straight Latin lashes.
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