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When Shark Beauty launched in 2021, it was entering crowded waters. The Hair Tools space, while not an industry I report on very often (consider this my way of making amends), is full of innovative, status-symbol brands, with cutting-edge technology to transform your airport-bound messy mop into chic waves or luscious curls. It’s a tough area for a brand to stand out in.
That said, Shark Beauty was entering the game with several distinct advantages.
For one thing, Shark Beauty is an offshoot of SharkNinja, a leading global appliances company that was evidently named by a precociously entrepreneurial four year old. SharkNinja’s portfolio stretches across home and garden, cooking, and now beauty, though the brand is primarily known by consumers for its popular line of vacuum cleaners.
Anyway, that four year old must be doing something right, because the company has basically reached Jaws status: per the SEC and Wikipedia (the two sources where I get all my news), “SharkNinja has grown from less than $250 million in net sales for the 12 months ended March 31, 2008 to over $3.7 billion in net sales for the fiscal year end of December 31, 2022.”
I’d like to believe that Shark Beauty played a pretty significant role in that growth. After all, there’s this graph, which shows the progress of the SharkNinja family as a whole:
Keep in mind that Shark Beauty was launched in 2021—seems like that might have kickstarted this current boom, no?
We saw similar growth patterns across SharkNinja’s community size, which has roughly quadrupled since 2018:
As well as its content volume, which has more or less tripled:
Notably, unlike EMV and community size, SharkNinja had experienced a decline in content volume between 2018 and 2019. This indicates that the launch of Shark Beauty, which galvanized social media content surrounding the brand, helped to reverse a period of stagnation and even decline for the SharkNinja portfolio’s online presence.
But don’t just take it from me. When we look at SharkNinja’s top EMV-driving hashtags from August 2023 to July 2024, we see haircare-related terms rise to the top alongside cleaning and home decor hashtags, further underscoring the digital dominance of Shark Beauty within SharkNinja’s broader portfolio:
But how did Shark Beauty become so dominant? The story starts with those top two hashtags:
So what is that whole ‘FlexStyle’ thing in SharkNinja’s No. 1 hashtag? If you haven’t heard of it, you might need it, since it’s probably pretty humid and damp under the rock where you’re living.
Shark Beauty launched FlexStyle in 2022, and FlexStyle launched Shark Beauty into the stratosphere. (Or whatever the upper part of the ocean is.) A multi-styler hair dryer with an emphasis on scalp health—great news for dry-headed boys like me—the product caught on not only thanks to SharkNinja’s technical know-how, but because savvy consumers were in search of a dupe for the equally viral Dyson Airwrap.
In other words, Shark Beauty saw blood in the water, and struck at just the right time.
It’s hard to overstate the role that FlexStyle has played in Shark Beauty’s quick ascension, but it’s easier to state it with precision, so I’ll do that instead: in addition to #SharkFlexStyle accounting for 15% of SharkNinja’s EMV from August 2023 to July 2024, the product itself generated $16.4M EMV, fueling nearly one quarter of the conglomerate’s digital conversation.
And what, or who, is driving that conversation?
Astute readers—which, as I’ve said before and will say again, is all of you—will note that SharkNinja’s No. 2 hashtag is #SponsoredBySharkBeauty. Slightly less astute readers will be able to predict that this hashtag accompanied content in which official Shark Beauty partners touted a range of the brand’s products, with a particular emphasis on FlexStyle.
Content that mentioned both FlexStyle and #SponsoredBySharkBeauty accounted for $3.0M EMV, which to me indicates two things. One, that the hashtag (and the partner program it represents) played a crucial role in Shark Beauty’s success. Two, that the partner program (and the brand it represents) extends beyond a single product. All good news for SharkNinja’s continued momentum.
This partner program extends across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, with an emphasis on the latter two platforms. Most posts feature creators sharing quick videos of their haircare routines, often detailing the amazing results they’ve enjoyed since starting with Shark Beauty.
The program also demonstrates a key aspect of the brand’s strong creator marketing strategy, because over the last year, Shark Beauty has received…
Chris Appleton is basically haircare royalty. In addition to being a go-to stylist for stars ranging from Kim Kardashian to Jennifer Lopez, and in further addition to serving as the creative director of smash-hit haircare brand Color Wow, he’s also really, really, really ridiculously good-looking.
As if he wasn’t busy enough with all that, Appleton also served as Shark Beauty’s top EMV-driver from August 2023 to August 2024. After contributing $129.5k EMV via two posts during the preceding 12 months, Appleton upped his totals to $1.8M EMV via 47 posts—an astounding 1.3k% YoY increase.
I’ve included No. 2 earner Meredith Welborn in there as well, because she also serves as an illustrative example of Shark Beauty’s strength. The brand isn’t just relying on big names like Appleton: Meredith, a mid-tier creator who was new to Shark Beauty during the time period monitored, also made a big difference.
While Chris typically shared how he incorporated Shark Beauty into looks for his A-list clients, Meredith shared everyday tutorial and GRWM content. This combination of content enforced the notion amongst digital consumers that Shark Beauty is a brand that can do it all. And if the metrics we’re seeing are true, then hey—maybe they really can.
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