April 26, 2022

Rachael Tyers | Co-Founder of tbh Skincare

39 minutes

In episode eighty seven of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts talks to the founder of tbh Skincare, Rachael Tyers.

In 2019, Rachel Tyers was working in marketing for a B2B company that sold medical devices. It was during this time that Rachael was made aware of a patented topical skincare lab sample and, having struggled with acne for the better part of a decade, decided it was worth trying. Rachael read studies, learned the science behind the formula, and saw real results in her own skin, so she and her mother brainstormed ways to raise capital and pitched for the rights to the product. That patented acne solution was then formulated into tbh Skincare’s first product, Acne Hack.

tbh Skincare launched online in March 2020, and within a month the brand had hit $10k in sales despite the bulk of the country plunging into lockdown. Rachael had belief in the tbh science and was aware that the brand’s marketing strategy would be make or break in terms of cutting through the heavily saturated skincare space online, so she persisted in implementing a number of marketing devices to get the product into the right hands- she sought influencer collaborations from people she genuinely felt her product could help, she began selling bundled products to increase basket size, and she seeded samples out to consumers so that she had a bank of real before and after photos to advertise with. Within 18 months, tbh Skincare had hit almost $1 million in sales.

Beyond that marketing strategy, what I found sets Rachael apart is that she’s entered the beauty space with a personal need. Rather than entering the sphere wanting to create a brand and go from there, Rachael had identified a problem that she had spent her whole adult life struggling with, discovered a solution, and wanted to make that solution available to others.

In this conversation, Rachael shares how she made a digitally-native lockdown-launch work in her favour, the art of meaningful collaboration and how to do it well, and why it’s sometimes worth slowing down the rate of product release.