Malibu C: 40 Years of Legacy, Reimagined for Omnichannel Growth
Malibu C has spent four decades earning trust one head of hair at a time, first in professional salons, then in the hands of everyday consumers who discovered what stylists already knew. That kind of legacy is an asset, but it's also a risk. Brands that lean too hard on heritage can calcify. Front Row's job was to make sure Malibu C's 40th year became a launchpad, not a victory lap.
As a long-standing partner, Front Row has run point on Malibu C's 360-degree digital strategy, expanding the brand's reach across consumer and professional audiences, accelerating DTC and retail growth, and optimizing performance on Amazon, where Front Row manages the brand's full Marketplace presence.
Challenge
Malibu C needed to do two things at once, and they tend to pull in opposite directions. First, expand brand awareness and relevancy with new audiences who have no memory of the brand's professional roots. Second, protect and grow the equity built over 40 years with the customers and stylists who made the brand in the first place.
Layer on top of that a fragmented channel landscape. DTC, retail, and Amazon each have their own algorithms, their own customer expectations, and their own definitions of a win. Without a unifying strategy, growth in one channel can easily come at the expense of another, and a 40th anniversary moment risks becoming a marketing beat instead of a business inflection point.
Objectives
Front Row built an integrated omnichannel strategy designed to work across every touchpoint where a Malibu C customer might discover, consider, or repurchase the brand.
Paid media, built for every channel An omnichannel paid media strategy drove performance across both DTC and retail simultaneously, ensuring Malibu C showed up with the right message in the right channel rather than a single campaign stretched thin across all of them.
Amazon marketplace, managed end to end Front Row owns Malibu C's Amazon strategy in full, and the Marketplace has become one of the brand's most significant growth engines under that management, generating $13M in total revenue. That performance reflects the kind of Amazon expertise Front Row brings to every client: content, advertising, and merchandising decisions made with a full view of how the platform actually converts, not guesswork borrowed from other channels.
Influencer partnerships and UGC Twenty influencer partnerships generated 1.6M views, giving Malibu C authentic, third-party credibility that paid media alone can't buy. UGC-led creative extended that authenticity back into paid and organic channels, so the brand's advertising looked and felt like the recommendations customers were already trusting.
Retention, email, and a new SMS channel Front Row's retention team launched Malibu C's SMS channel from scratch, and the results moved fast: 35% list growth, a 28% click rate, a 2.41% conversion rate, and 842% ROI within the first year. Combined with strategic email marketing, retention efforts contributed $755K in revenue, proof that a mature brand can still build brand-new channels that outperform benchmarks.
SEO and discoverability SEO work reinforced findability across the funnel, making sure that increased visibility from paid and influencer efforts had somewhere to land organically.
The 40th anniversary campaign All of it converged into a dedicated 40-year anniversary campaign, turning a milestone most brands would treat as a nostalgia play into a platform for lasting connection, one built to bring in new customers while deepening loyalty with the ones who'd been there from the start.
Results
Four decades in, Malibu C is proving that legacy and momentum aren't opposites. With Front Row managing its omnichannel strategy and its Amazon Marketplace presence end to end, the brand is positioned to keep compounding both.
- 470% average ROAS over the past three years
- $13M in total Amazon revenue
- $755K in retention marketing revenue
- 1.6M views across 20 influencer partners
- 35% SMS list growth, 28% click rate, 2.41% conversion rate, and 842% ROI in year one of the SMS program
