Trending💫| Black-founded brands | Top 50 on TikTok 📱
Awesome new brands pop up online every day. It's hard to keep track. Nexttbrand keeps a close eye on brand engagement metrics and lets you know what's taking off. Newsletter every Wednesday. Nexttbrand site is always there.
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Trending now
Happy Box Store
Make great modern day gifts online. Design your personalized custom gift boxes and fun care packages for every occasion.
See more brands under miscellaneous.
Aer
Modern gym bags, travel backpacks and laptop backpacks designed for city travel.
See more brands under workbags & backpacks.
Pepper
Pepper makes bras that finally fit small chested women.
See more brands under intimates.
She’s Birdie
A modern personal safety alarm that is both stylish and effective.
See more brands under miscellaneous.
Branch
Standing desks, workstations, ergonomic chairs and filing cabinets, sold direct to save you money.
See more brands under furniture.
Category spotlight: Black-founded brands
In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to highlight some of the fastest-growing brands led by Black founders in this newsletter. You can also filter to Black-founded brands on the nexttbrand site.
Soko: Ethical jewelry from sustainable materials in Nairobi, Kenya.
Oui the People: Razors, body oils, and other shaving products.
Savage X Fenty: Lingerie for everyone made by Rihanna.
Golde: Matcha, latte blends and superfood face masks.
Fun extras
I’ve been coming across one-off examples of DTC brands with a great TikTok strategies. It got me curious about how DTC brands are navigating TikTok more generally so I put together a list of the top 50 DTC brands crushing it on TikTok. You can check it out here:
Some highlights:
Cosmetics / skincare dominating TikTok: Almost half the DTC brands in the top 50 are in the beauty space (led by JeffreeStar). The brands heavily leverage influencers for content. There’s clearly huge interest for user-generated cosmetics / skincare reviews because apps like Influenster and Supergreat have been popular for a while. The category is a very natural fit for TikTok.
Gymshark is winning TikTok: While the brands ranked #2 through #8 are all in cosmetics / skincare, Gymshark, a fitness apparel company, blows them all out of the water to capture the #1 spot with over 2.5B views. Gymshark was on TikTok relatively early, setting up challenges and partnering with top influencers.
TikTok works across a broad range of categories: Kids products, fitness equipment, genetic tests, hot sauce, men's grooming, dental care, phone cases — you name it. Brands of all sorts were able to gain traction on TikTok (check out copy.ai for a B2B example).
Influencers aren’t the only approach: MEL Science (kids science kits) and We're Not Really Strangers (card game) are breakout TikTok successes. Both create a lot of their own content, positioning themselves as domain experts. MEL Science shares fun science experiments while We're Not Really Strangers shares life advice:
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