I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
From search to scroll: DTC brands in the discovery economy
Based Bodyworks made $5 million on TikTok Shop, in just one month.
Last month, it beat L'Oréal-owned Color Wow. And came in fourth across all of beauty, sitting just behind Tarte Cosmetics (which has been around since 1999).
Based, launched in 2022, has no legacy ad budget, no retail shelf.
So how did it crack the top 4?
It's Tuesday. Let's get into it.
🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by HubSpot
Good marketing tools give you data. A connected stack gives you context. HubSpot's updated Essential Apps for Marketers collection pulls together 14 top apps that connect your ad platforms, creative tools, and content systems — extending what your marketing team can see, understand, and act on inside HubSpot. Pair them with HubSpot for Marketers and you've got the setup to build awareness, influence revenue, and scale without the chaos.
So who is Based Bodyworks?
Launched in 2022, Based Bodyworks is a DTC men's grooming brand that makes hair, skin and body care products priced between $14 and $28.
Its founder, Lance Baker, is a hair stylist from the Bay Area who started cutting hair in his parents' garage at 14.
With 2.7 million TikTok followers, Based has sold more than 2 million units on TikTok Shop (its Hair Texture Powder alone accounts for over 440,000 units).
Here's the detail that makes this worth your attention: among the top 10 beauty brands by TikTok views growth in Q1 2026, eight saw more than 90% of views coming from paid content.
Based Bodyworks was the only one driven primarily by organic reach.
Based Bodyworks is quickly gaining a cult following of Gen Z men, says WWD
The DTC channel you can't ignore anymore
For DTC brands, TikTok Shop has shifted from experiment to serious revenue channel, fast.
Based Bodyworks is proof.
Health and beauty is its largest and fastest-growing category, with 84% year-over-year growth.
What does that mean for DTC brands?
Firstly, yes. you should be on TikTok Shop. But showing up isn't enough.
The brands winning here are doing three things:
Building content that fits naturally into how people already use the platform.
Embedding in communities that already exist around their category.
Letting the product do the talking.
Scroll. Discover. Buy. Repeat.
Traditional e-commerce is built around intent.
You open Amazon, you type something in, you buy it.
In fact, we covered just how powerful that search bar is in our last edition, Ctrl + F for revenue.
But TikTok Shop inverts this entirely.
Imagine this: Your scrolling TikTok, you go from a transformation video, to a grooming tip, then a dance video, maybe a get-ready-with-me and then suddenly bam!
Somewhere in a reel, a product appears. And you find yourself clicking checkout!
It wasn’t an Ad. It was just content. Content you were already enjoying.
You watch. You feel something. You tap ‘Buy’.
The end of intent?
Psychologists describe this pattern as a form of impulse buying, triggered by content rather than prior need and driven by emotional arousal.
The decision isn't planned. It's sparked.
The curiosity, the aspiration, the satisfying before-and-after. All of it does the convincing before the rational brain catches up.
When we encounter a desirable product, the brain releases dopamine and it happens before the purchase.
This dopamine surge is actually triggered by the possibility of the reward, not the reward itself.
And that feeling of excitement, of wanting? It directly overrides the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational, decision-making part of the brain and asks "do I actually need this?"
TikTok turbocharges this mechanism. 55% of American TikTok users have made an impulse purchase on the platform and 71.2% of shoppers say they are inspired to shop when they stumble across something in their feed — not when they go looking for it.
There are also other psychological effects layered on top of this.
Social proof: seeing real people using and reacting to a product, lowers the perceived risk of buying.
The mere exposure effect: the more you encounter something in your feed, the more familiar and trustworthy it feels.
And FOMO: the fear of missing out on a trending product before it sells out.
Discovery and DTC
You don't need to be a beauty brand to apply this. The underlying mechanism: designing for discovery rather than search, is available to any DTC brand willing to rethink how they show up.
You can do this by:
Embed in existing conversations. What subculture or content niche already exists around your product category. Ask yourself: are you actually part of it?
Make the product the content. If your product has a visible result, a satisfying application, or a before-and-after story. That is your content strategy.
Let the founder be the face. Lance Baker had hundreds of thousands of followers before he even launched the brand. The trust was built before the product existed. For DTC founders, your personal credibility on a platform is a distribution channel. It compounds in a way that paid ads don't.
Run live shopping. Based hosts live shopping streams around the clock. TikTok Live creates real-time purchase urgency that static listings never can. For brands with a demonstrable product, this is still an under-used format with relatively low competition.
Dr. Dent, an oral care brand, saw significant growth on TikTok Shop in the same period.
👇 Vote below
Dr. Melaxin. Dr. Dent. Dr. Brandt: Have you noticed how many beauty brands are putting "Dr." in their name?
See you next week, Nithya
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
How's the depth of today's edition?
Insane Media is more than one voice
💡 Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the founders, creator economy, Human resources and AI trends.
