Introduction
Rachael Wilde built a remarkable skincare business success story, growing TBH Skincare to $20 million in annual revenue by age 27. Starting in 2019 with innovative acne treatment technology, Rachael and her mother Bridget transformed a licensing opportunity into a thriving beauty brand. This skincare business success journey reveals strategic branding, authentic content creation, and calculated risks that led to exponential growth. Learn how Rachael navigated financial challenges, leveraged viral moments, and expanded into retail to build her empire in the competitive skincare industry.
Founder Success Story QnA
How did you start TBH Skincare in 2019?
I wasn’t someone that ever had an aspiration to start a business. I was obsessed with marketing, studied it at university, and ended up in a corporate job in medical devices. It was through that job that I came across a technology that ended up being the whole thing that started TBH Skincare. One of the companies had this incredible patent that could break down biofilm in the body, which is a core part of fighting bacteria. They realized it could be used to treat acne, and coming across that product and knowing how the distribution model worked, I was interested mainly from a consumer point of view. I read the entire patent behind the technology, which was about 40 pages, and I was like this is amazing. This ended up being a dinner table conversation between myself and my mom and her partner, and in the next two weeks after that conversation, we secured a meeting with that company to talk about licensing the tech. We won those rights, and that was the end of 2019.
What was the pre-launch process like for TBH?
Pre-launch was very organic. We had a small scale photo shoot to get all the e-commerce assets ready. I was sharing on Instagram – I set up the social media page, told everyone I had quit my job, and that I was doing this thing. The Instagram page was at zero followers, but I didn’t stop to consider the outcome. I started sharing organically on Instagram the different stages of setting it up, the photo shoot, products arriving. We also started running with only about 20 samples, sending them out to people to try and give us results, feedback, reviews that we could use as testimonials. We went through a very organic, low spend, low fire process pre-launch and generated a small waitlist of people. The Instagram page was probably at about 1,000 followers by the time we launched.
How did launching during COVID affect your business?
We launched on March 18, 2020. We had nothing to compare it to, and having my mom in the business, we did month-by-month forecasts. The forecast for month one was $0 – she’s conservative. We did $4,000 worth of sales in our first day, which was amazing. About 50% was supportive family and friends, but the other half was people who had been watching along. It was a really scary time, but the way I saw it was people aren’t going to be shopping in store, they’re not spending money going out, they’re going to spend all their time on their devices. This was probably the perfect time to be launching an e-commerce based business. When the first lockdown lifted, we actually saw a drop in e-commerce sales. We were only selling to Australia, not the world, and we already had all our stock here.
How did you approach branding and developing the TBH brand?
The branding was very intentional. A lot of people in that industry who knew this medical tech believed that it should be a healthcare professional-led brand or a clinical brand, but I saw a huge opportunity to do something different and go against the grain. I was looking at how to position it with competitor maps, price points, efficacy, tone of voice, brand experience. I was mapping all the competitors onto axes, about 20 of them, trying to figure out where the white space was. It was so obviously in this high efficacy but really strong brand voice space. Because I was the customer, I had that personal experience that I could relate back to. I had gone through a very emotional experience with acne, and the way brands were dealing with that pain point wasn’t actually empathizing with what customers were going through.
How did you differentiate your products in a saturated market?
We launched with three products – a gentle cleanser, our hero spot treatment which we called the Acne Hack Cream, and a little device to cleanse your skin with. The name “Acne Hack Cream” was very intentional. It was very much about that community build, and we leveraged the fact that I had been the customer as a real connection point. The experience I had been through was similar to what customers had gone through – going through the traditional treatment pathway with your GP, getting prescribed topical treatments, then oral antibiotics, then stronger medications. I was sharing that story, and so many people saw themselves in that and were able to trust because they could see there was someone behind the brand who really understood what they had gone through.
How did you build confidence to put yourself out there as the face of the brand?
I’ve always been someone quite extroverted, and social connection is something that comes naturally to me. But that’s not to say I didn’t doubt myself. I just didn’t stop to think too much about it. It wasn’t something I ever thought I need to do to build the brand; it was something I almost had fun with along the way. I was always that person in my social life who documented everything. More as a way of connecting with my friends, I’m not an influencer. So I just took that into the business, and it was very organic. I would say practice makes perfect – the more content you put out, the more chance you have of something really hitting and going viral. Just go as nuts as you can with putting as much content out there as possible, and you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. The confidence only comes with practice.
How has your social media strategy evolved across Instagram and TikTok?
We built the brand on Instagram – it was pre-TikTok. We still have the most engaged community on Instagram, so the community build is still where it’s at in terms of Instagram being the hero platform for that. But we’re seeing a new audience come in with TikTok. With Instagram, it’s incremental and you build it very intentionally over a long period. With TikTok, you can build that overnight. That’s the incredible opportunity founders have today – finding this audience on Tik Tok and finding it quickly. But it’s a game of patience and grit because you have to be ready for things to not work time and time again until you get that breakthrough.
Can you talk about the viral TikTok moment that transformed your business?
This was in 2022. At that point, we were doing about $650k in revenue a year, solid but not profitable. We were burning through cash, spending a lot on marketing. My marketing coordinator got sent a segment that Abby Chatfield had hosted on radio where she mentioned our product. Five days after it aired, I was leaving for the day and thought I’d film a blind react to hearing this for the first time. I put it on in the car, sat there listening, filmed my reaction, uploaded it to my personal page, and didn’t look twice. The next morning, I woke up to hundreds of orders. The video had 70,000 views overnight. It was organic, had social proof with Abby recommending the product, and it was doing everything – awareness, consideration, the whole way through the funnel in one video. We paid nothing for it, and that piece of creative generated income for the business for about 9 months with under $10 CPA.
How did the Price Line retail partnership come about?
We were having conversations with Priceline around August 2022, right when the TikTok video went viral. I loved Priceline from the beginning and was set on it. A lot of people said if you want to be the best-in-class Australian beauty brand, you should aim for Mecca. But I really understood who our customer was – if you’re dealing with a bad breakout or struggling with confidence, Mecca isn’t where you naturally go for acne discovery. We loved the fact that we could hero the science behind the product, it was medically backed, and having a pharmacist in store was valuable. From a price point perspective, we never wanted to price this aspirationally – it was never going to be luxury or out of reach. This brand was for everyone dealing with that problem, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to get their hands on it. Priceline was that partner because it had that blend of being a beauty destination and also a pharmacy that people trusted.
Why did you choose equity crowdfunding for raising capital?
We did equity crowdfunding in October 2021, about 12 months before the viral moment. We wanted to build out new products because we only had three products to begin with. We’d had feedback from potential investors that our margins weren’t strong enough to withstand retail or international distribution models. In a category like this, they said margins need to be above 70% and ideally above 80%. We had some work to do. We also wanted to bring in other products our customers were asking for. We chose equity crowdfunding because we loved the idea of getting buy-in from a community that would understand the business and become champions of it. It gave people an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with the brand, which was a cool model and something quite new to Australia at the time.
What were other key growth catalysts for your business?
In the initial phases, how we got to $650k was heavily through partnering with the right influencers. They were more ambassadors than influencers, working with us on a 6 to 12 month basis. We didn’t have masses of them, just a few we had really trusted relationships with. We also had a lot of media interest in the early days, which gave us credibility. Otherwise, we were just another new e-commerce brand, but we had something novel behind the brand that media loved and could talk about. That helped us gain credibility and trust quickly with the customer group. That was the fire we started alongside the organic piece, and when we turned on Meta ads, we were able to get something out of that channel because we had that foundation.
How did you manage financial challenges and cash flow in the early days?
There were times we were flying close to the sun every day. We were having to tip in more money to the business, loans came in from my mom and her partner, we maxed out the overdraft facility. We were getting to the end of that $250,000 from friends and family – the runway was out. We had monthly P&L meetings where it would be like, “Okay, how much money did we lose this month? How much cash do we actually have in the bank?” We were so lucky to have my mom because she had such an accurate view on cash flow. She managed cash flow daily with daily projections on what invoices were coming through. There was a lot of stress in the business – we were personally guaranteeing that loan, going to lose all our friends’ money, going to lose all our money. For me at that time, I was young, no mortgage, no kids, so I thought if I lose everything, I’ll just get a job. For them, it was different – they were later in life and thought they might be really setting themselves back.
What advice would you give to early-stage startup founders?
I always speak to the philosophy that you should be doing at least half a million dollars through organic channels before you even try and test paid. For founders trying to drive traffic to their store using organic channels, I recommend finding pages your customers are following or content you find engaging. When I watch a piece of content, I dissect it – why did I watch that? I’ll write down people’s first 3 seconds that they said in a video as a reference. We live in a world where attention is scarce, so you have to grab them in the first half a second or they’re gone. Good content often comes down to how it’s put together and how you get that draw-in from the customer group. Storytelling and that emotional pull are important – why would someone care about this piece of content? Volume is key, but there’s a certain way to be strategic. Don’t fall down at the last hurdle – if you’ve filmed a video, get the first 5 seconds right or the video is gone. Watch it 500 times, get other people to look at it and get feedback.
How have you structured your team around content creation?
My team is built around content. We have a heavy amount of headcount in content. Our marketing team is split into campaigns, content, and growth, and content is its own for a reason. We have three marketing specialists, a senior content manager, and then interns in that team running across both the brands. They spend the majority of their time on social, but also do email and copy. Interns are especially great for TBH because you’re getting the customer in the door with fresh eyes – the digital native who understands how media is consumed. I’m very aware in my office that I’m 28 years old, and that’s becoming older to our target demographic. Having interns helps us stay connected to this customer group and remain relevant on the cutting edge.
How did the merger with Boost Lab come about?
In August 2022, everything started changing. We were trying to find investment that would come with some knowledge base or advisory. We wanted to bring in advisors and cash that also came with knowledge or networks. We realized we had never done this before, and if we were going to scale, we needed someone else. One conversation was with a private equity investor who said they had a skincare investment in their portfolio called Boost Lab. They suggested we talk because there was potential with complementary skill sets. We met with Craig, one of the founders of Boost Lab, and he took one look at our business model and numbers and said we were missing cash. They had been private equity backed, were heavily retail focused, while we were pure play e-commerce operating on a much smaller cash budget. He saw the big believer in our model and said we just needed cash. We saw a huge opportunity to go way faster together, leveraging each other’s strengths.
What’s next for your business after the merger?
We merged in March 2023, and both brands scaled very quickly. TBH got an injection of cash and went into retail, while I took on Boost Lab’s e-commerce and brand positioning, and they took off on e-commerce. The business flipped – TBH is more of a retail brand now, and Boost Lab is more e-commerce based. We went through challenges in that first 12-18 months because both businesses multiplied by four in 12 months, so inventory, staff, all these things became nightmares. Recently, we’ve reset to work out what processes we need in place – proper supply chain management, internal staff looking at forecasting, all these holes in the business. Next, we’ll look at key growth opportunities – export will be key, going intentionally into one international market. We’ve also focused on new product development, but there’s still a lot of growth left in Australia, so we’re optimizing current state before expanding elsewhere.
Rachael Wilde Business Stats
Rachael Wilde’s skincare business success journey demonstrates impressive growth metrics. Starting with $250,000 from friends and family plus a $120,000 loan, TBH Skincare reached $4,000 in sales on its first day and grew to $650,000 annually before a viral TikTok video catapulted the brand to profitability. After merging with Boost Lab to form York Street Brands, the combined entities now generate $22 million in annual revenue, with TBH contributing $10 million. The business maintains a gross margin above 70% and has expanded from pure e-commerce to retail distribution through Priceline stores across Australia.
- Launched TBH Skincare in March 2020 with $370,000 initial funding
- Achieved first-day sales of $4,000 despite launching during COVID-19
- Grew to $650,000 annual revenue before viral moment in 2022
- TikTok video in 2022 turned business profitable with under $10 CPA
- Merged with Boost Lab in 2023 to form York Street Brands
- Combined business revenue reached $22 million in FY 2024
- TBH Skincare contributes $10 million to annual revenue
- Expanded from e-commerce only to retail distribution through Priceline
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Initial Funding | $370,000 |
| First Day Sales | $4,000 |
| Pre-Viral Annual Revenue | $650,000 |
| Current Annual Revenue (TBH) | $10,000,000 |
| Combined Annual Revenue | $22,000,000 |
| Gross Margin | 70%+ |
| Team Size | 17 (marketing) |
Rachael Wilde Method
Rachael Wilde’s skincare business success stems from a strategic approach that combines authentic branding, community building, and calculated risk-taking. Her method focuses on creating genuine connections with customers while leveraging innovative technology and content marketing. Below are the key elements of her approach that transformed TBH Skincare from a startup to a multi-million dollar brand.
- Licensed cutting-edge biofilm technology for acne treatment instead of formulating from scratch
- Built authentic brand voice against industry trend of clinical positioning
- Leveraged founder’s personal acne journey to connect with target audience
- Prioritized organic content marketing and community building before paid advertising
- Capitalized on viral TikTok moment by creating follow-up content and media stories
- Strategically expanded into retail through Priceline to reach broader audience
- Merged with complementary business to accelerate growth and fill skill gaps
Rachael Wilde Tools
Rachael Wilde utilizes a strategic combination of technology and marketing tools to drive her skincare business success. From e-commerce platforms to social media management, her tech stack supports both brand building and operational efficiency. These tools have enabled TBH Skincare to scale rapidly while maintaining strong customer relationships and data-driven decision making.
- Shopify – Custom-built e-commerce platform for online sales and customer management
- Instagram – Primary community building platform with engaged follower base
- TikTok – Key platform for viral content and reaching new customer segments
- Equitise – Platform used for equity crowdfunding campaign to raise capital
- Analytics tools – For tracking customer lifetime value, retention rates, and cohort analysis
Key Notes
Rachael Wilde’s journey to skincare business success offers valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs. Her story demonstrates the power of authentic branding, strategic risk-taking, and adaptability in building a thriving business. These key takeaways highlight the critical decisions and approaches that contributed to her remarkable success in the competitive beauty industry.
- Skincare business success requires differentiating in saturated markets through authentic branding
- Founder-led marketing and personal stories create powerful customer connections
- Content marketing should precede paid advertising, with goal of $500k organic revenue first
- Viral moments require immediate strategic action to maximize business impact
- Retail expansion can complement e-commerce when aligned with brand positioning
- Strategic partnerships or mergers can accelerate growth by filling skill and resource gaps
- Financial discipline and cash flow management are critical for survival in early stages
Get Started in Just 5 Steps
Building a skincare business success like Rachael Wilde’s requires strategic planning and execution. By following these five key steps, aspiring entrepreneurs can lay the foundation for their own thriving beauty brand. This roadmap incorporates the essential elements that contributed to TBH Skincare’s remarkable growth from startup to multi-million dollar enterprise.
- Identify innovative technology or unique product differentiator in your chosen category
- Build authentic brand voice and community through organic content marketing before launch
- Leverage founder’s personal story to create emotional connection with target audience
- Test and refine content strategy across multiple platforms, focusing on engagement metrics
- Strategically plan expansion channels (retail, international) when business reaches critical mass
Conclusion
Rachael Wilde’s skincare business success story exemplifies how strategic branding, authentic content creation, and calculated risk-taking can transform innovative technology into a multi-million dollar enterprise. From licensing cutting-edge acne treatment technology to building a community-focused brand that defied industry conventions, Rachael demonstrated the power of understanding customer pain points and connecting on an emotional level. Her journey from $4,000 in first-day sales to a $22 million combined business after merging with Boost Lab offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs in the beauty industry and beyond. By prioritizing organic growth, leveraging viral moments, and strategically expanding into retail, Rachael built not just a successful business but a blueprint for skincare business success that others can follow.