Quick Facts
- Sol de Janeiro hit $1 billion in US sales in 2024, tripling revenue through influencer partnerships with 6,000 creators
- The brand’s new social strategy prioritizes ‘non-followers’ equally with followers across fragmented platforms
- Mists alone generated $573 million in sales across Sephora, Ulta and Amazon, making Sol de Janeiro Sephora’s top-selling brand
Sol de Janeiro’s director of global influence says the biggest shift in social media has been “the collapse of platform monoculture.” The executive, who joined the company in December, emphasizes that “the rise of non-followers has become equally as important as followers.”
The beauty brand has moved away from a TikTok-only approach to embrace what the director calls “positive fragmentation” across platforms. This strategy shift helped the company triple sales to more than $1 billion in 2024.
“There was a social strategy that basically was like, ‘figure out TikTok’ for a while,” the executive said. The current approach prioritizes knowing “who your intended audience is and what makes them tick.”
Sol de Janeiro worked with more than 6,000 influencers in 2024. The brand’s mists generated $573 million in sales between Sephora, Ulta Beauty and Amazon. Globally, sales reached $2 billion.
The company experienced explosive growth from $39 million in revenue in 2019 to roughly $950 million in fiscal year 2025. This represents a nearly 24x increase powered almost entirely by organic social media.
Sol de Janeiro became Sephora’s number one top-selling brand across all categories in 2024, dethroning Rare Beauty. The achievement came while selling only body care and fragrance at a retailer defined by makeup and skincare.
The brand’s FragranceTok success started in 2022 when Cheirosa mists went viral, accumulating 850 million views by 2023. Over 90% of the brand’s growth in 2023 came from social media, virtually all organic.
Beyond traditional metrics, Sol de Janeiro focuses on deeper engagement indicators. Share rates and save rates are “really important” because they show when “your community is resonating with what you’re putting out there,” the director said.
The brand analyzes comment quality rather than just counting responses. “We need to go a bit deeper on the KPIs,” the executive noted.
Piper Sandler’s survey found Sol de Janeiro was the number one fragrance brand among upper-income teen girls by fall 2024, capturing 23% mindshare in a category dominated by legacy houses.
CEO Heela Yang describes the company’s approach as forward-focused. “We need to get the word ‘defend’ out of our vocabulary, because we have to move forward,” Yang said.
