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.
