Early data on Rhode’s much-hyped retail debut at Sephora last Thursday shows the E.l.f. Beauty-owned Hailey Bieber-powered beauty brand has quickly climbed into the top 10 skincare brands on the beauty specialty retailer’s website.
According to beauty e-commerce agency Navigo Marketing, Rhode accounted for 2.8% share of total skincare sales on Sephora.com from Sept. 4 to 7, placing it in the tenth spot in the skincare category behind The Ordinary, Sephora Collection, Laneige, Glow Recipe, Beauty of Joseon, Summer Fridays, Tower 28, Touchland and Biodance. Available in seven shades on Sephora’s website, the brand’s hero product, $20 Peptide Lip Tint Nourishing Glaze, drove the majority of its sales and accounted for 2% share of Sephora’s online skincare sales. The $32 Glazing Milk was another strong performer from Rhode’s lineup.
Rhode landed the 18th spot on Sephora’s website in the makeup category and snagged 1.9% of total online makeup sales. The $25 Pocket Blush powered the gain, with the product taking the 11th spot in Sephora’s makeup category. Navigo’s data does not include sales made at Sephora stores. Sephora carries 16 of Rhode’s bestselling products across its full North American store fleet, including $36 Barrier Butter Intensive Moisture Balm, $30 Glazing Mist Hydrating Face Spray and $32 Peptide Glazing Fluid Dewy Gel Serum.
Demand for Rhode has been high at Sephora locations, and employees have hopped on Reddit to report long lines outside of stores before opening, product sellouts and strong buy-online-pick-up-in-store orders. A store associate with the handle shangraykin wrote, “We had a line going down our building, over 100 bopis before we opened and have already sold out of half the products. At least today is going by fast.”
Another associate with the handle BoyWhoWorries chimed in, “Another update! Im in a C volume store, and our budget ended at a +118%. The craziest thing is our smaller store out-performed several A-volume stores in our district!! It was wild and we didn’t have nearly enough staff, but luckily the majority of clients today were self-shoppers just asking where Rhode was. We had very few people looking for color matches today…everyone just wanted Rhode.”
Over on TikTok, a Sephora employee with the handle izzythesizzler_ uploaded a video on Thursday, the day Rhode launched, that showed shoppers crowding around a Rhode display. The caption on the video read, “I’ll keep my Sephora soldiers in my heart and prayers today and yes it did get more packed right after this video.”
@izzythesizzler_ I’ll keep my Sephora soldiers in my heart and prayers today 🫡🫡 and yes it did get more packed right after this video 💀 #rhode #rhodebeauty #sephora #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp
So far, Rhode hasn’t leveraged any paid media on Sephora’s site, per Navigo. The brand is currently running 33 campaigns on Meta, with 14 started the week leading up to its Sephora debut and three launched after, according to Facebook’s Ad Library tool. IRL, Bieber unveiled a new Rhode window display at a Sephora location in New York City’s Times Square neighborhood to celebrate the brand’s entrance at the retailer last week. The event included a pink branded photo booth where customers who purchased products from the brand could get their photos taken and receive a free Peptide Lip Tint or Peptide Lip Treatment.
Rhode’s Sephora debut is anticipated to be the beauty specialty retailer’s largest launch to date across the United States and Canada, according to Priya Venkatesh, global chief merchandising officer of Sephora. The retailer plans to expand the brand into Sephora’s stores in the United Kingdom in the fall.
Fueled by marketing muscle and Bieber’s uncanny ability to build buzz around every product launch, Rhode racked up $212 million in net sales for the year ended March 31 solely through direct-to-consumer distribution. It was scooped up by E.l.f around the same time in an acquisition valued at up to $1 billion. Ahead of Rhode’s launch, Sephora registered 2 million organic searches for the brand on its website.
Rhode mania doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. According to a recent report from software and data insights firm Launchmetrics that identified the top 20 buzziest beauty brands of 2025, Rhode’s media impact value increased 58% during the first half of this year over the same period last year, the fastest rate of any brand. Media impact value assigns a monetary value to media and communication activities across print, online and social media. Launchmetrics estimates Rhode generated $283.4 million across its media mentions between January and June.
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