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From its much-loved Brazilian Bum Bum Cream to the Cheirosa perfume mists that have become a TikTok sensation, Sol de Janeiro is riding high on the success of several cult products. Now, the beauty brand is launching into sunscreen with a new campaign fronted by American model and influencer Sofia Richie Grainge.
It comes at a pivotal time for Sol de Janeiro, which grew sales by 199 per cent to €474.4 million in the nine months ending December 2023. With sales expected to reach nearly $1 billion for the full fiscal year, there is industry chatter of the brand going public — though co-founder and CEO Heela Yang, who retains a minority stake after the company was sold to L’Occitane in 2021, tells Vogue Business “it’s all speculation”.
The sunscreen line-up includes an SPF 50 version of its existing Bum Bum Body Firmeza Oil as well as a new lotion and a spray. Why sunscreen, and why now? The global suncare market is expected to reach $22.8 billion by 2032, up from $13.2 billion in 2023, according to market research firm Imarc Group. Beauty companies have been tapping into the opportunity: among them, Australian suncare brand Ultra Violette secured a AU$15 million investment from Aria Growth Partners (which has previously invested in The Inkey List and Hero Cosmetics), while last August, Bioré owner Kao snapped up tanning brand Bondi Sands.
“We’re very excited because we disrupted the bodycare category and we are essentially creating the perfume-mist category in the premium industry. So we believe that we can also create a premium body sunscreen category that is really meaningful and can help our consumers enjoy using sunscreen products on their body,” explains Yang.
The price points are relatively high compared to some competitors, ranging from $36 to $40. However, Sol de Janeiro maintains an edge over its competition, thanks to its influencer marketing strategy, says Yang.
For its perfume-mist collaboration launch in March 2022, Sol de Janeiro partnered with Brazilian singer Anitta. With over 65 million followers on Instagram, Anitta is the second most-followed Latina woman behind Jennifer Lopez. In May 2023, the brand enlisted another Brazilian celebrity, Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira, to promote the launch of its perfume-mist collection. Now, the brand is hoping to access a more global audience through 25-year-old Richie Grainge.
“Anitta really fit our goal of that year, which was to strengthen our Brazilian point of difference. With Sofia, she is modern, she’s slightly younger and she’s very global and she’s got the look that a lot of different backgrounds of women can relate to,” says Yang. “For us, she represents where our brand is this year. It’s quite global [with distribution in Singapore, India, Australia, Europe, US and the UK, through stockists including Sephora] and it’s younger than when we first started. We are widening our reach, but at the same time, we want to make sure that our consumers feel like we get them and understand them, and a celebrity partnership is part of that.”
A teaser video for the campaign on the brand’s Instagram page last week has so far garnered 750,000 views and over 250 comments. “What I love about Sol de Janeiro is that they really honour the diversity of our communities. They make products for everyone,” Richie Grainge tells Vogue Business ahead of the launch on 27 March.
Despite the virality of some of its hero products, there is no rush to develop more, Yang says. “Our vision is to become a meaningful, inspirational, global beauty brand that has a cult following. You can build scale while maintaining that cult following. That’s how we started the brand — we didn’t start with 10 or 20 products. We started with a small number and we worked hard to earn the love of the people.”
On the IPO rumour, the executive adds: “I think there’s a lot of noise when a company is doing well. My focus is purely on our products, making sure our branding is right, and that we’re resonating with our consumers.”
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