In today’s social media-driven beauty scene, consumers are aware of brands even before they’re readily available in their region. That goes double for skin-care brand Bubble, which has 2.7 million followers on TikTok, the platform that has made many of its products go viral with Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consumers. Since launching in 2020, Bubble is on track to reportedly surpass nine figures in annual sales, thanks to that increasingly beauty-hungry demographic, and has expanded to retailers including Ulta and Walmart. On October 11, Bubble will expand to another massive market: It will be available in brick-and-mortar stores in Australia through the Priceline drugstore chain.
“[Australia] was our No. 1 destination on DTC. We knew we had really big demand in Australia, and we were looking to make it accessible to customers in the right way,” said Shai Eisenman, Bubble founder and CEO. “Between the shipping and the waiting, [Australian customers] have spent a lot of time and money to get the product to the region. So we’re excited to finally make it accessible.”
To start, 11 Bubble products will be available at Priceline. Prices will range from $20-$30 AUD per product ($13-$20 USD), keeping it in line with the brand’s U.S. prices.
“It’s always a bit more exciting when you can’t initially get a product. It creates a little bit of that FOMO experience,” said Bonnie Szucs, vp of business development for Bubble.
But even with social media driving much of Bubble’s brand awareness, a brick-and-mortar presence is still crucial to reaching consumers, making Priceline a crucial partner to expand to the region, Szucs and Eisenman said.
“We always wanted a retail partner because that is what our consumers want,” said Szucs. “We have a younger demographic, and they’re often in-store, shopping with friends. They like to touch and feel and explore the product before purchasing. Some of them are so young that they don’t have credit cards; they don’t have the means to be able to purchase online.”
Bubble declined to share sales goals for its Australian launch, but Szucs cited fellow affordable skin-care brand The Ordinary as a benchmark. The Estée Lauder-owned affordable skin-care brand arrived at Sephora Australia in 2022 and opened its own store in Melbourne that same year.
But while The Ordinary went with a limited set of storefronts — Sephora has just three stores in Australia — Bubble focused on breadth. Bubble will be available at 350 of Priceline’s more than 470 stores throughout the country, giving it a reach beyond even Mecca, Australia’s homegrown beauty retailer with 100 stores in Australia and New Zealand. Both Glossier and Tower 28 arrived in Australia via Mecca in July.
While Priceline does not have the beauty credibility of Mecca or Sephora, shelf space in the drugstore giant allows Bubble to reach areas where Australia’s population is more sparsely distributed. Roughly 40% of Australia’s population is concentrated in just Sydney and Melbourne. Szucs likens the population makeup to her native Canada, where residents outside of the major cities of Toronto and Vancouver often have little access to beauty shopping.
“Bubble has never been a brand that is a New York and L.A. brand. And it won’t be a Melbourne and Sydney brand, either — nor will it be a Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver brand. The core proposition of Bubble has always been accessibility,” she said. “In Perth or Calgary or Kelowna or Saskatchewan in Canada, sometimes [drugstores] are the only shopping destinations in those towns. And so that experience of shopping and going to the Priceline and getting your beauty and personal care goods is almost a more special experience.”
Bubble took a similar strategy with its U.K. launch in January by partnering with popular high-street retailer Boots. “There’s a Boots within 10 miles of every single person in the country. So that’s where we want to be, because we want to make sure that every single person is spoken to,” said Szucs. According to Eisenman, Bubble became one of the top three-selling skin-care brands at Boots within six months of its arrival, and it hopes to do the same at Priceline within 18 months.
But Australia also presents its new challenges and adjustments. Bubble hired Melbourne-based Alysha Richards, previously head of retail at Frank Body, to act as the local head of country to better navigate Australia’s logistical challenges. Its time zone and calendar cycle differ from Bubble’s North American base, plus its local social media landscape is unique.
“I’ve spent the past five months working with our global community team to build our Aussie community from 500 pre-launch to nearly 1,000 today,” Richards said. “We’ve been asking them what they want to see from Bubble, and their No. 1 response is that they want good skin and they want it to be easy. We know we can [provide] this through our Priceline partnership.”
The door is open for further global expansion, but certain types of growth may require more significant outside investment. And it seems the brand is not yet ready for an exit just yet.
“Every year has been different than the previous one. Honestly, every month has been different than the previous one,” said Eisenman. “It is a constant question of: How do you scale independently when eventually launching in multiple retailers? Expanding to multiple regions becomes a lot harder when you get out of English-speaking countries, for example. But we still have so much more to do, and so much more that we can expand and do independently.”
