On a humid day in June 2022, thousands of browsers sat in reload limbo, waiting for the first drop of Rhode’s Peptide Lip Treatment. Three days later, the “SOLD OUT” banner blanketed the site, TikTok was filling with frantic videos and posts on social media, and the brand’s email provider briefly crashed under the weight of a six-figure wait-list. Last week, e.l.f. Beauty agreed to buy the two-year-old label for up to $1 billion, $800 million up front, another $200 million tied to performance. “We found a like-minded disruptor in Rhode,” e.l.f. CEO, Tarang Amin said.
Bieber’s star power helped, but celebrity alone doesn’t mint a billion-dollar outcome in 23 months. Rhode’s secret is a rigorously simple, four-part playbook: rent trust, ration supply, own the data, and turn customers into co-creators. Each pillar is backed by hard numbers that should make any CMO sit up straighter.
Photo by Sonia Roselli on Unsplash
Trust, Rented by the Post
Rhode spent its marketing budget on people, not placements. This strategic choice directly mirrors evolving consumer behavior, where:
- 69% of shoppers say they trust an influencer recommendation more than a brand’s own messaging.
- The average influencer campaign returns $5.78 for every $1 invested; top performers top $18.
- TikTok, Rhode’s primary stage, delivers engagement that legacy channels can’t touch. Even after a pandemic-era cooldown, a typical sponsored post drew an average of 2.18% engagement, triple what Instagram manages.
Bieber may be the macro-megaphone, but an army of nano- and micro-creators keeps the feed humming in between drops. That “creator pyramid” trades expensive, fleeting reach for compounding credibility.
Scarcity Sells Better Than Discounts
Every Rhode launch is a controlled burn: small batch, fixed drop time, real-time stock meter. The result? Fans brag about wait-list positions the way sneakerheads flaunt raffle tickets.
Numbers bear out the psychology. TikTok Shop transactions in the United States jumped 156% year-on-year in late 2024, growth Deloitte links directly to viral stock-run videos and limited-edition drops. Meanwhile, a major U.S. retailer reports that 30% of delivery customers willingly pay a $3.99-$9.99 surcharge just to nab a 30-minute fulfilment window; proof that consumers will literally pay a premium for speed-based scarcity.
Scarcity is hardly new, but Rhode wields it with modern transparency: buyers know exactly when the next batch hits, turning FOMO into word-of-mouth instead of frustration.
Data Beats Door Displays
Because Rhode stayed off Sephora’s shelves, every click, cart, and review flowed through its own Shopify-plus-Klaviyo stack. First-party data is fast becoming retail’s most valuable currency:
- Seven in ten U.S. retail executives plan to roll out AI-driven personalisation within a year, an initiative that only works when you own the data exhaust.
That data allows Rhode to fire precision restock alerts, model lifetime value before broadening SKUs, and negotiate with wholesale partners from a position of strength now that the e.l.f. cheque has cleared.
Community Commerce: The Moat Money Can’t Buy
Gen Z’s spending power is approaching $13 trillion, and 62% of that cohort opens TikTok daily. Rhode meets them where they already live, TikTok Lives, Discord feedback rooms, close-friends Instagram Stories, then hands them the microphone. The brand crowd-sources shade names, invites beta testers, and reposts user-generated content as fast as it appears. 80% of retail executives now expect social commerce to grab an even bigger slice of revenue next year.
Community work is slow burn, but once trust compounds, it halves paid-media spend and turns every product drop into a newsroom event.
What Marketers Can Steal Tomorrow
InboxArmy specialists distills Rhode’s playbook into four actionable strategies marketers can adopt immediately: build a creator flywheel, program the sell-out, guard first-party data, and make belonging part of the product experience.
Build a creator flywheel, not a one-off stunt
Reserve the bulk of the budget for high-engagement niche voices; sprinkle the rest on reach-driving macros.
Program the sell-out
Publish restock calendars, show the inventory ticker, and let scarcity headline your story instead of discounts.
Guard the first-party gold mine
Even if wholesale beckons, keep an owned storefront; personalisation, LTV modelling, and future retail-media revenue depend on it.
Make belonging to the product
Early-access codes, founder AMAs, Discord polls, anything that shifts the customer from purchaser to participant.
The Take-Away
Rhode’s lightning rise isn’t a celebrity fluke; it’s a master-class in modern retail alchemy. Rent trust, ration supply, leverage data, and elevate the community. In an algorithm-muddled, ad-price-inflated era, those four levers may be the last dependable ingredients for turning a start-up into a sensation.
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