How TikTok Helped This Beauty Brand Break $100 Million in Sales
The Chicago-based beauty brand generated more than $100 million in annual revenue in 2023, a roughly 30 percent increase year-over-year, thanks in part to TikTok. Beachwaver has 1.2 million followers on the social media app, and sells products through its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop. The company is known for its curling irons with rotating barrels, but also sells flat irons, hairdryers and plant-based hair care products.
Beachwaver CEO Sarah Potempa and her sisters Erin Potempa-Wall and Emily Potempa co-founded the business in 2010 with just $20,000, and to this day have never taken outside investment. Sarah, who was working as a celebrity hairdresser at the time, was frustrated by the miscommunications that would happen when explaining how to style hair over the phone. Eventually, she drew a sketch of a curling iron that made the process easier by using a rotating barrel. Today, the company has 12 patents and 21 trademarks across its product line.
After landing a spot selling on QVC in 2012, Beachwaver expanded into retail through outlets such as Ulta, Nordstrom, Target, Kohl's and Costco. Revenue grew steadily, but that growth had slowed when, in 2015, Beachwaver partnered with Victoria's Secret for the lingerie brand's fashion show. The videos posted by the brand that feature Sarah and Beachwaver's flagship product on Victoria's Secret's YouTube channel have racked up more than 500,000 total views. The success of the videos inspired them to do more on their own.
Beachwaver posts videos and other content on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Pinterest, and its website, but has seen high engagement on TikTok, where the brand was quick to create a profile and start using the TikTok Shop feature, which launched in September 2023. Today, between 30 to 40 percent of sales come from TikTok Shop, according to the company.
Beachwaver posts live videos every Tuesday and Friday that can pull in hundreds of thousands of views. On Tuesdays, Sarah hosts the company's packing show, during which she packs shipments from the company's warehouse and encourages shoppers to purchase items in order to watch their own orders get packed. On Fridays, Sarah leans on her background as a hairdresser to teach viewers how to use various Beachwaver products to achieve certain looks. These videos typically include demonstrations of how the company's rotating curling iron works and incorporate flash sales, promotions and bundles to encourage buying. Sarah cites the interactive nature of the videos as a big reason for the high engagement.
The instant customer feedback TikTok offers is helpful for everything from curating the brand's livestreams to choosing colors for the company's curling irons, Sarah says. The platform also has an affiliate program that allows users to earn a commission from selling Beachwaver products on behalf of the company, which the co-founders say keeps social followers more invested in the brand. Through the TikTok program, Beachwaver has as many as 20,000 open affiliates. Beachwaver also has two affiliate programs independent of TikTok, which include its Campus Wave program with up to 100 college representatives per year and the Wave ambassador program, which allows affiliates with 3,000 or more social media followers to earn up to 20 percent comission on sales, according to the company's website.
In May, Beachwaver is planning to open a New York City location in Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Refinery building that will serve as an an event space and studio complete with "mock hair salon" for content production and live-selling.
President Joe Biden signed into law on Wednesday a bipartisan bill that could force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its stake in the social media app or face a U.S. ban. The potential ban would substantially disrupt business for the brands and creators that rely on TikTok, which is already planning a legal challenge to the bill.