With TikTok’s meteoric rise as a shopping platform, it's rare to find a brand that hasn’t begun investing in TikTok Shop to reap the benefits of social-based selling. For Leslie Ann Hall, Founder and CEO of digital agency ICED Media, TikTok Shop strategies are second nature. When TikTok Shop first launched in the US in September 2023, ICED Media became one of its first partners, as well as its only beauty specialist, helping to launch several brands into the space, which is estimated to have a market worth of $17.5 billion by the end of this year. Now, Hall is broadening her horizons, keeping a TikTok-centric focus with the launch of Haut Drops, a culture and trend-inspired beauty “drop” business.
Haut Drops was created to revolutionize how trend-driven beauty is sold and experienced. The new industry player will curate collections that capture the latest beauty trends (think tomato girl, cortisol face, and slugging, to name a few), turning them into collectible keepsakes filled with SKUs from varying brands all conforming to the same trend theme, resonating with TikTok’s culture of immediacy, impulse, and excitement.
“I’ve had this really fortunate, what I’ll call, head start,” Hall tells BeautyMatter, reflecting on her extensive experience building TikTok shops, which led her to launch Haut Drops. “One of the things that we understand—which we didn’t know going into it—is how important merchandising is to a brand’s success on TikTok Shop. When you think about the mindset of the TikTok shopper, it really is about the impulse buy, the FOMO, and what will make them stop scrolling.”
The concept behind the business’ trend-based drops will cater directly to TikTok’s zeitgeist while creating an out-of-the-box e-commerce experience for beauty enthusiasts from all walks of life. Hall believes that TikTok Shop differs greatly from platforms like Amazon or Sephora, which she describes to be “transactional but not very entertainment-forward,” making it the perfect place for Haut Drops to begin. “If you’re going to disrupt that entertainment viewing behavior,” Hall notes, “it really is about showing consumers something that’s going to help them tap into that impulse—something that they’re going to want right away.”
For Hall, Haut Drops is the blueprint for building a stronger beauty community. The founders' vision is to build a “brand-agnostic” space where consumers can build their beauty routines from an assortment of industry names that are both trend-driven and timeless. “If you opened up the handbag of any woman at a beauty event, even though most of them work at beauty brands, they'd have four or five different products from different brands because that's the way that we in the beauty community achieve our looks,” she adds. “Haut Drops gives us the ability to sell these regimens, while thinking about trends, and showing up for the consumer with the best products in that category at a fair price, curated on their behalf, making it much more turnkey.”
The brand's first drop, the “Glow on the Go Jet Set,” is a holiday bundle that retails for $88, featuring mini-sized bestsellers from four of Haut Drops’ debut brands: Topicals, Glow Recipe, caliray, and Moroccanoil. The assortment of products is housed in a limited-edition Haut Drop branded, mini, yellow backpack. “For this first launch, it really was about wanting to do something that felt right around the holiday season, that was travel friendly, that was collectible, and that really felt a little more timeless,” says Hall.
Originally, the Glow on the Go Jet Set was meant to contain three SKUs, but the high demand to be part of Haut Drops increased this number to four. “There was so much demand, so we opened it up to launch with four. The waitlist is insane, filled with our [ICED Media] clients, plus all these brands that are reaching out,” Halls explains. “I think our positioning gives us all the advantages in the world.”
Wende Zomnir, founder of caliray attests that Haut Drops has given the brand the ability to collaborate with other businesses in a simple way that the brand would’ve found a lot more difficult to pull off alone. “We know the team at ICED Media are experts at building and growing TikTok Shops for beauty brands, so when Leslie invited us to make history as one of the inaugural brands at her new start-up Haut Drops, we jumped at the chance,” Zomnir tells BeautyMatter. “As a newer brand, it’s exciting to be featured with other industry icons like Moroccanoil and Glow Recipe. That’s one of the biggest draws of Haut Drops—the ability to partner with other brands.”
Haut Drops is inspired by the way culture drives shopping in specific communities. “From sneakerheads to gaming fans, culture creates a way to shop better than any other,” Hall says, emphasizing that beauty enthusiasts are just as passionate, if not more so, than other fan communities. “I think the inspiration was really, how can we help these brands in a real, solution-oriented way, merchandise at the speed of trends, merchandise at the speed of culture, but do it in a way that's really in service of the consumer and not just kind of transactional for the sake of selling something,” she adds.
Further reflecting on launch inspiration, Hall states that she wants Haut Drops to be the Supreme of beauty. “Supreme’s business model is more than just the products and more about making a brand name,” she says. “That’s what we want for Haut Drops; we want to build the brand name so that it's bigger than just the brands curated in the latest assortment. We want to be able to give the Haut Drops stamp of approval that becomes a status symbol, or a way that people are claiming their own identity that aligns based on their values and interests.”
Sochima Mbadugha, Vice President of Strategy and Business Opportunities at Topicals, believes that the cultural element of Haut Drops will help the business to gain traction while uniting key players in the industry. “Haut Drops offers immense value through its curated selection of brands and products, simplifying the process for consumers to discover their new favorites,” Mbadugha tells BeautyMatter. “Drawing inspiration from the success of drop culture in streetwear and fashion, it only makes sense to apply a similar model to beauty. We’re excited about the opportunity to reach new audiences by being featured alongside powerhouse brands.”
Hall believes that the cultural value of Haut Drops makes the "business potential for collaborating and curating unlimited.” The founder revealed that the aim is for monthly product drops to become weekly drops. “I think as soon as Q2 2025, we're going to go weekly to accommodate what I can only call really intense demand because we want to give more brands a chance,” she says.
Hall exclusively revealed that collaborations with TikTok creators will play a pivotal role in the Haut Drops marketing strategy. So far, through ICED Media contacts, Haut Drops has a sizable sampling program in place for its first launch, which includes creators from a list of over 30,000 who work through TikTok Shops' Affiliate Center.
The founder is particularly excited to be working with high gross merchandise value (GMV) creators who often excel at driving sales through TikTok Shop, despite having smaller followings. These creators, whom Hall dubs “super creators,” can generate significant revenue per video, a testament to TikTok’s ability to produce sales-focused influencers outside of household names. “What TikTok Shop has done is really launched a whole new crop of what we call high GMV creators,” she says. “These creators are giving us the ability to create visibility and build brands with fresh voices, while in turn, uplifting their influencing craft.”
Haut Drops signifies a new era of collectible beauty on TikTok, sure to benefit a range of consumers and content creators alike. Going forward, Hall intends to connect with as many businesses, brands, and creators as possible, looking to the future with big plans, hinting at ideas such as movie-focused drops and launches that coincide with industry events such as the Met Gala. By creating a shopping experience that feels dynamic, community-driven, and collectible, Haut Drops is tapping into the core of what makes TikTok such a powerful force in today’s beauty landscape.
