Since Rhode was acquired by Elf Beauty in May for $1 billion last year, founder Hailey Bieber has been on a world tour with her brand, to Canada, UK and France. Last week, the brand made its debut Down Under, launching in Australia and New Zealand at prestige multi-brand retailer Mecca. It was the beauty retailer’s biggest launch in history, with over one million visitors across its 110 stores on launch weekend (February 12 to 15).
This follows the sell-out success of Bieber’s North America and UK launches with Sephora — the retailer’s biggest launch to date — as Rhode continues to scale via international expansion, new product launches, and destination pop-ups.
“Australia made a lot of sense as our next market, because we knew and saw that there was so much demand for the brand there,” Bieber tells Vogue Business exclusively on Zoom, a few days after the launch. She’d already flown from Sydney to London for a photoshoot. “Mecca was a no-brainer partner,” she continues, “it’s the number one beauty destination in Australia and it has its own incredibly loyal fan base.”
To plant her flag in a new territory, Bieber, who remains Rhode’s chief creative officer and head of innovation, attends launches in-person. She has employed a careful playbook of social media-friendly, sensory local pop-ups, limited-edition product launches, and face time with her consumers, to drive brand equity.
“Rhode is my baby and having launched in retail, there was always that little bit of nervousness, letting it go into a new space. You don’t really know how people are going to receive it,” she says. “[But] it was really important to me that the brand shows up in a store among other really incredible brands.”
For the Australia launch, the brand mounted a bakery pop-up, serving local sweet treats like lamingtons, a square-cut sponge cake dipped in chocolate icing and coated in desiccated coconut, as well as branded coffee cups and pastry boxes. Bakery customers received a stamp card that they could take along to select Mecca stores to redeem Rhode samples. Bieber herself greeted and posed for selfies with fans at both Mecca and the bakery pop-up. She even attended the Sydney Wuthering Heights premiere while in town, generating buzz.
The expansion strategy is paying off. During Elf Beauty’s third-quarter results in February, the company confirmed Rhode as its fastest-growing brand, exceeding expectations. It’s also the top selling brand at Sephora in North America according to Elf Beauty, beating out scores of viral upstarts and heritage names. Elf Beauty CFO Mandy Fields said in the earnings call that Rhode is expected to “contribute approximately $260 [million] to $265 million in net sales in fiscal 2026, versus our expectation for $200 million”.
The Australian market will help drive this growth. In 2024, Australia’s beauty and personal care market was valued at $8.45 billion, with color cosmetics making up $1.52 billion, per Euromonitor. Mecca has become a leader in launching international brands — including Westman Atelier, Charlotte Tilbury, Glossier, and Emma Lewisham — into its stores.
“Rhode is one of the most culturally relevant beauty brands in the world right now. We knew this was a brand that would resonate with our customers — the look, the tone, the positioning, the aesthetic,” says Jo Horgan, founder and co-CEO of Mecca. “Rhode has been one of the most requested brands by our customers since its launch.”
The Australian launch of Rhode marked the first time the brand has simultaneously launched online direct-to-consumer (DTC) and physical retail in a market. “You don’t have to do one or the other. We as a brand have a lot of confidence in what we do DTC, and having launched with Sephora, we’ve gotten to learn a lot of really valuable information in launching retail,” says Bieber, noting that the general in-person experience for customers has exceeded her expectations, and is part of the reason why she tries to be present at each market opening.
“Most of the excitement comes from being able to walk into the store and to touch and feel [the product]. What’s also amazing and really convenient is, if that’s not your scene and that’s not how you shop for beauty, then there’s access to it online,” she adds. “It was a great learning for us to see that you can do both at once and both feel really successful.”
Alongside its international launch events, Rhode stages seasonal pop-ups in honor of new products to drive momentum. The brand hit ski resort Big Sky, Montana, from February 4 to 8 this year, with mint green snowmobiles and deck chairs to celebrate the launch of its caffeine reset sculpting cream mask and plumping lip mask. The brand also took over restaurant Everett’s 8800 with cozy marshmallows, biscuits, and hot drinks.
“Activating for different seasons is really fun and that was the first time we thought about activating in a winter setting. It’s always fun to be able to do things around a certain climate, city, or place,” says Bieber. “Something that we do really well at Rhode is giving people an experience. Some people might have felt that Montana was random, but to pop up in the middle of a beautiful ski town [fit with the products], and we love to show up where other people haven’t.”
Next, Bieber is already planning Rhode’s summer activation, following the success of Majorca pop-up and the photo booth in Ibiza. “I’m such a forward thinker, which bodes well for planning in retail and in a company with products,” she says. “We have something that is launching this summer, and I want to do something around that. I’m just not 100% sure what that looks like, or what I want it to be exactly yet.”
Bieber uses her pop-ups as a means of showcasing new product development (NPD). In Montana, it was the aforementioned caffeine reset mask that she had been working on for over a year. “I always think about where I see a gap in the market when making products. I wanted the mask to feel hydrating, but also really invigorating to the skin. I wanted it to bring blood flow to the skin and to feel snatching the same way as a facial massage with machines,” she says.
In the run up to the launch of the plumping lip mask, Bieber knew it was a risk expanding further into lipcare, in the shadows of Rhode’s hero product: the peptide lip treatment. By August 2023, just over a year since the brand launched in June 2022, Rhode had sold one million units of the treatment. Off the back of its success, Bieber saw a gap for a more plumping formula. “All the plumpers that I’ve found and used on the market, they burn or they’re uncomfortable. I never go back and reach for them because it’s an unpleasant experience. I wanted to make one that over time would continue to give volume to the lips by how it was formulated,” Bieber explains, adding that the new product uses four blends of peptides for fuller, long-lasting lips.
Rhode’s next launch is pimple patches that Bieber and her husband, Justin, have been wearing both in public and on Instagram. They come in cutesy designs including a mushroom, the Rhode logo, and a strawberry, in a nod to the brand’s collaboration with Krispy Kreme for the Strawberry Glaze campaign from 2023. “They took a really long time to make. I thought they were going to be one of the fastest things to make and maybe one of the easiest because there’s a lot of them out there already,” says Bieber. “But again, I wanted ours to stand out and be different [in design and formula]. They’re coming out really soon, and we’re going to do an activation that’s different from anything else we’ve done before.”
Skincare wearables, like patches and under eye masks, is where she’s focusing her efforts. “We’re going to keep on evolving the products, like our eyes patches, they don’t slide on the face and you can wear them outside the house. I throw them on to go to the gym and to grab a coffee,” Bieber says.
With the operational support and global scope of parent company Elf Beauty, and a clear product development agenda, Rhode’s expansion is showing no signs of slowing. The next continent on Bieber’s wishlist is South America. She has been dreaming of launching in Brazil since the brand’s inception in homage to her mother’s heritage. “I would love to be everywhere eventually, and Brazil is something we will eventually do, but I can’t speak to any timelines yet. South America is a market I’m excited about,” she says. “We’re launching really strategically, one place at a time. And as a brand, we’re not really trying to push momentum. We’re expanding at a really comfortable pace, and will continue to build the world of Rhode by pushing the boundaries of skincare.”
Post-acquisition, many founders take a step back from the day-to-day. But Bieber is steadfast about her role in Rhode, and the brand’s future potential. She’s also learning a lot from Rhode’s new parent group, where she’s now an advisor-at-large. “I’ve learned so many things. It’s invigorated me even more as a founder,” Bieber says. “Having more responsibility has been something that has been really amazing and it also solidifies how great of a home Elf Beauty has been for Rhode — they’ve been so encouraging and let us spread our wings and fly.”
