The beachwear brand Pink Palm Puff has a dedicated following among teenage girls. It helps that its CEO is one.
Lily Balaisis, the 18-year-old founder and CEO of Pink Palm Puff, said the brand has always intended to resonate with young girls. The brand has taken off in the three years since its founding thanks to young female influencers, many of whom were personal friends of Balaisis, who posted about the brand in its early days. The brand has since taken off with no outside funding. Balaisis’s father, Linas Balaisis, serves as the brand’s president.
But now, Balaisis said, Pink Palm Puff is ready to go beyond high schools. At the beginning of July, the brand launched its first major retail partnership with Pottery Barn Teen. It brings the brand, known for its hoodies and sweatpants, into new categories like bedding and home decor.
These categories are relevant to a specific demographic Pink Palm Puff is targeting: college students. The Pottery Barn Teen collection covers dorm room and campus essentials like comforters and backpacks. All in all, it’s a bit more grown-up than Pink Palm Puff’s most recent large-scale collaboration: a “Little Mermaid”-themed collection with Disney earlier this year.
“We have always had an incredible connection with teen girls, but we want to move toward college age,” Balaisis told Glossy. “As our community grows and moves through the phases of life, we want to meet them where they are. We really feel like we can reach beyond teen girls as our community grows up.”
The enthusiasm for the brand has been apparent over the last year. Pink Palm Puff hosted pop-ups in Los Angeles at The Grove and in Miami. The pop-up at the Grove drew over 7,000 people in a single day, making it the largest crowd the Grove has ever seen for a single pop-up, Balaisis said.
The pop-up in Miami was even larger, with 10,000 people showing up. Balaisis said one superfan of the brand showed up at 9 a.m. the day before the pop-up, while the team was still setting up. Hundreds of people camped out overnight to be at the front of the line, with the first 50 people getting a free hoodie.
Pink Palm Puff has a large and engaged following on social, with over 700,000 followers on Instagram and 1 million on TikTok. Its most recent influencer partners have included Kenzie Yolles (1.1 million TikTok followers) and Lauren Kim (1.4 million TikTok followers).
For now, Pink Palm Puff is only available online and direct from the brand. Pottery Barn will mark the first time the brand has been sold in-store.
“There are no immediate plans for our own stores, but we will for sure have more pop-ups and more brand partners,” Balaisis said. “One thing we want to do is more collaborative pop-ups in the future; that’s the next big plan.”
Pink Palm Puff releases new drops every one to two months. Balaisis said this cadence, with drops typically consisting of two tops and two bottoms, is a good balance of frequency and volume. Between drops and after all the product is sold, the Pink Palm Puff online store displays only a timer for the next drop, building anticipation before each new release. As for prices, sweatpants sell for around $80.
Balaisis declined to share revenue figures for the brand, stating only that it has generated strong sales in every U.S. state and Canadian province, as well as in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
“We just completed two very large-scale collabs with Disney and Pottery Barn,” Balaisis said. “Now we just want to focus on growing the product line and trying new things while keeping the core [summery] aesthetic. We want to make sure we’re growing but not too fast.”
