Vacation, an award-winning sunscreen company on a mission to make sunscreen fun, closed an oversubscribed $6 million Series A funding round.
WHO: Launched in June 2021, Vacation was founded by Marty Bell, Lach Hall, and Dakota Green with a mission to make sunscreen fun. The trio worked alongside Dr. Elizabeth Hale, Board-Certified Dermatologist and an SVP of The Skin Cancer Foundation, as well as world-renowned perfumers Carlos Huber and Rodrigo Flores-Roux, to create “Leisure-Enhancing” SPF products that are both unique in the category and that make the wearer look, feel, and smell like they’ve been to paradise and back. The nostalgic 360-degree brand world inspired by the sun-soaked days of 1980s beach culture quickly went viral. The brand is sold in Ulta Beauty, Nordstrom, and Anthropologie, with new retail deals with Bluemercury, CIBO, and Aerie. In addition to national retail partnerships, the brand will deepen its commitment to “leisure destinations” such as The Standard, Kith, Ace Hotel, Palisociety, Mondrian, Fellow Barber, and C.O. Bigelow.
WHY: The funding will be used to support the brand's rollout in retail and invest in building a team and product development.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “Dakota, Lach, and Marty have built an incredible brand that is bringing fun back to the sun care category, while demonstrating the ability to break through the inefficiency of digital marketing today with innovative products and creative marketing—that’s their unfair advantage,” said Brian Thorne, Partner at Silas Capital and Head Chair of the Jimmy Buffett Excellence Committee at Vacation. “While the company is laser-focused on building a sizable business within sun care, we do believe that Vacation has the permission to extend into a wide array of adjacent categories and the opportunity to ultimately become this generation’s Margaritaville.”
TRIBE DYNAMICS EMV: While DIBS brought creators on a vacation, Vacation had plenty of creators calling “dibs.” The sunscreen brand, known for its creative and offbeat social media presence, reeled in $3.7MM EMV in Q2, an impressive 222% QoQ growth. A sizable 84% ($3.1MM EMV) of this total came from creators who hadn’t posted about Vacation in Q1, with this incoming cohort comprising nine of the brand’s top 10 earners, as well as 21 of its top 25 earners. Just in time for summer, creators like Karen Gonzalez (@iluvsarahii on Instagram) and Debby Ryan (@debbyryan) offered organic endorsements of Vacation’s products, often favoring the Classic Whip SPF 30. This activity helped the brand earn mentions from 1.2K creators, an impressive 248% QoQ community expansion.
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