Within the last few months, a handful of virality-driven brands with significant sales momentum through social media shopping channels, such as TikTok Shop, entered brick-and-mortar retail in the U.S. Among these is the K-beauty brand responsible for popularizing salmon sperm skin care, Medicube and Lili Reinhart’s acne-safe brand, Personal Day.
Medicube, specifically, saw a 1,142.81 percent increase in TikTok Shop revenue from 2024 to 2025, just before they launched at Ulta on Aug. 4, according to data from Charm.io. In May, alone, Medicube made $4.1 million. Personal Day totaled $770,801 in TikTok Shop revenue before entering Ulta on Aug. 10. Meanwhile, GuruNanda, the all-natural oral care brand famed for its Pulling Oil Mouthwash, was selling 10,000 to 20,000 units a day when it hit Ulta’s shelves in July.
Retailers are noticing these figures and hoping to translate them in-store — but it’s not that simple. Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer and chief shopper at WSL Strategic Retail, told WWD that the accessibility of these brands online should be preserved, and the way to do this is to ensure the customers of the brand are the same as those of the retailer.
“You’ve got to understand who the person is that’s buying from TikTok shop, and where do they fit? Because if you’ve got a twentysomething person who’s very interested in beauty or fashion or something they’ve seen on TikTok Shop, but the retailer doesn’t have that audience, putting a brand there may not work,” she explained. “Even if they want to try and build that audience, you still have to have that kind of alignment.”
To build on the visibility of viral brands like Anua, Beauty of Joeson and Skin 1004 — all of which amassed considerable attention as interest in K-beauty blossomed — retailers, Liebmann noted, should “address the connection” in-store. “Place the brand in a ‘Trending on TikTok’ section so somebody who walks in the door who may not have been on TikTok Shop will think this must be hot,” she explained.
Ulta, having snapped up many of these brands already, implements a similar model through its Sparked program, a platform that reserves space for further-along brands entering retail, as well as its “Spotted on Socials” page online. Medicube is featured under Sparked as well as Personal Day. According to Shelagh Wong, CEO and cofounder of Personal Day, the brand “is targeting $10 million in retail sales at Ulta in its first full year.”
Lyla Chang, head of U.S. marketing department for Medicube, said the brand has already “exceeded internal sales forecasts, marking a very promising start.”
The fastest-growing brands on TikTok, ones that could be poised to hit brick-and-mortar retail next, include M3Naturals, Ceelike, Sttes Perfume and Missha, data from Charm.io shows. Wonderskin, a top-selling lip product brand on Amazon, could also be next, thanks to its Lip Stain Masque, which sells every 15 seconds.
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