When Farah Naz re-launched her award-winning makeup line for women with olive-toned skin in the U.K. last year, she wasn’t expecting that 59% of EX1 Cosmetics’ online sales would come from the U.S.

Word travels fast, especially on the Internet.

“This has been largely down to the power of social media to transcend boundaries, with a number of U.S. Youtube personalities posting videos about the brand and talking about it on their social media networks,” said Farah, a British Asian with a degree in biochemistry and a masters in international management.

Farah created EX1 in 2004 to address a gap in the U.K. beauty market. “Although premium lines did exist for women with my skin tone,” she said, “there was very little in the way of mass market products.” In fact, Farah discovered that women with warm skin tones had “little choice but to buy their makeup in department stores”— spending up to three times as much as their Caucasian counterparts.

The reaction from the press and public was “overwhelming,” said Farah, who is EX1’s majority shareholder.

“We ended up with a lot of press coverage for a new brand.”

The company also “received literally hundreds of emails from women all over the U.K. expressing their relief that they had finally found makeup that matched their skin.”

Two years later, Farah took the line off the market to focus on her young family. She reformulated and reintroduced it in the U.K. in 2013. The line is sold at five locations in London, including BeautyMart (a concept beauty store featuring top “picks” from former British Vogue beauty director Anna-Marie Solowij and brand creative Millie Kendall) at Harvey Nichols and Topshop. It’s also available on lookfantastic.com, hqhair.com and beautyexpert.co.uk, which offer free delivery worldwide.

Farah is targeting a 15% to 20% market share of the U.K.’s ethnic mass-market makeup sector by Sept. 2018. EX1 consists of five products — Invisiwear Liquid Foundation, Invisiwear Compact Powder, Pure Crushed Minerals Powder Foundation, Delete Concealer and Blusher — each available in three to five shades. Prices range from $11 for a concealer and $18.60 for a mineral foundation, at current exchange rates. The formulas address the biophysical characteristics of this skin type; for example, olive skin can be oily so the products are oil-free. Going forward, Farah would like to add eye shadow, lipstick, eyeliner and lip liner to the assortment.

Farah aims to roll out to the U.S. by the second quarter of 2015. She is looking at “chains of cosmetics stores which carry both classic and emerging brands” for distribution. “Our retail interest in the U.S. has been very much consumer-led,” she noted, “with dozens of women from the U.S. emailing us almost daily.”