Tone’s CEO On Turning Streaming Fame Into A Fast-Growing Men’s Personal Care Brand

Creator-led brands have had mixed results in beauty, but Tone is making a compelling case for the model in men’s personal care, a notoriously challenging category that is nonetheless growing and finding renewed relevance with a new generation of consumers.

Launched last February by Kai Cenat, Duke Dennis, Fanum, Agent 00, ImDavisss and ChrisNxtDoor, members of Any Means Possible (AMP), one of the largest collectives of livestreamers on Twitch and YouTube reaching tens of millions of followers, in partnership with media company and talent agency Night, Tone promptly generated seven-figure sales at its debut and has since posted a 3X to 4X year-over-year sales increase.

CEO Nathaniel Weiss helps lead the pack at Tone, which, according to financial information resource PitchBook, has raised $8.95 million to date from investors including Strand Equity and VMG Partners. Weiss, who connected with Night in 2024, was previously president of Nécessaire, where he scaled the prestige brand with co-founders Randi Christiansen and Nick Axelrod as body care emerged as a breakout beauty category. VMG was an early investor in Nécessaire. Prior to joining Nécessaire, Weiss was VP of digital at True Religion.

Tone entered Target in July last year after starting in direct-to-consumer distribution with body lotions, deodorants and lip balms priced below $15 in four scents: Coconut, Fresh, Citrus and Woodland. The Target launch marked its expansion into body wash, cologne body mists and roll-on fragrance oils, with the body mists extending its price range to $20.

Although Tone is merchandised in Target’s men’s grooming section, a significant minority of the brand’s users are women, evidence that its efforts to broaden the category’s traditional boundaries are paying off. Tone’s tagline is “personal care products that are made for everyone.”

Its latest scent release, Island Breeze, is pushing Tone further into gender-crossing territory. For the Island Breeze campaign, the brand collaborated with female streamers Yonna Jay, ExtraEmily and Wendy Ortiz, who collectively have around 13 million followers across platforms.

The campaign has outperformed all of Tone’s previous partnership campaigns, generating roughly 15 million views and 2.6 million engagements on social media. More than 300 creators organically shared the Island Breeze mailer unboxing, driving an additional 6.47 million views. Launched June 18, the scent already ranks among Tone’s top three fragrances.

Weiss says, “The female streamer audience engaging with and purchasing a brand that skews male in its heritage is a real proof point that the positioning is landing.”

Ahead, we chat with him about what’s next for Tone and where he sees men’s fragrance heading.

How did you decide on Tone’s approach? 

Understanding the creators, obviously, and then the community around them is important because that’s going to be your first group of customers. So, I moved to Atlanta and spent a lot of time with the AMP guys. What interested me is the level of sophistication in male grooming that they had certainly versus when I was their age. They would get manicures once a week, were super into high-end designer colognes, very aware of facial skincare routines, had very particular product preferences when it came to deodorants.

Clearly out of the gate, we wanted to build a brand that has efficacious, great products. We don’t want to be a mass brand, we want to sit more in that masstige space where you can really invest in product a little more. That was one takeaway.

The other takeaway was that what really lights up the AMP guys and our broader customer base is scent. There’s a massive trend of people engaging in scent in a deeper way, whether it’s a deodorant, body wash or fragrance products.

For example, we launched with four scents at Target about a year ago, and it immediately became clear to us and to Target that the customer is really leaning in with scent. So, we started doing LTO [limited-time-only] scent drops. We did one last Christmas, and we have another one for back-to-school.

What are the bestsellers?

From a form factor perspective, we have a deodorant business that is on fire. It’s an aluminum-free, very efficacious stick. The other category really cranking is fragrance. We have a hybrid body mist cologne, a roll-on fragrance oil and hybrid body mist colognes in pen-size formats. They fit in your pocket, and we found people like that little form factor. That’s our top fragrance product, and it has four different scents. It’s less about trial and more about people being able to pop it in their pocket and roll with it throughout the day.

We do consumer focus groups. When we did them two years ago, a lot of the cologne conversation was, “Cologne for me is something I wear at date night.” When I say date night, I mean like the prom. Now, it’s like, “I take that on-the-go cologne. I put it in my backpack, and I put it on before and after the gym. I’m taking that with me just to go to the mall. I’m putting these little pens in my pocket.” So, there’s definitely a move into daily usage as opposed to a special occasion usage.

What’s Tone’s core demographic?

Gen alpha and gen Z. We have 12-, 13-, 14-year-old customers, and we have 28-, 29-, 30-year-old customers, and it’s pretty evenly distributed. We are in the men’s aisle at Target, but I would say there are 35%, 40% female end users. The brand is not a pure-play men’s brand as you would think of an Old Spice, for instance.

That’s part of a more modern version of masculinity. This was something that came directly from Fanum, Kai and Duke and the team. We want to feel very accessible and open to all. When we launched at Target, we had a pink colorway, and it gives you a flavor for the brand. It is architected to be broad. I always think of it as a big tent.

Obviously the brand came with a built-in audience by way of the AMP streamers, but what’s been the strategy to expand its reach outside of them?

When we do a big launch moment, it’s a livestream spectacle. So, when we launched at Target, we had a Target store overnight in San Antonio where the guys livestreamed for six hours. When we launched Amazon, we shot an amazing piece of creative with the guys, and it was like a true commercial.

But if I had to point to probably the biggest piece of our marketing strategy, it’s really about the creator ecosystem on the top end. Last July, we did a big partnership with Travis Hunter, who was the No. 2 draft pick in the NFL and Heisman Trophy winner and big fan of the guys and vice versa. We did a big event and activation with him.

For the activation for Island Breeze, we partnered with three of the biggest female streamers [Yonna, Extra Emily and Wendy Ortiz] and shot a beautiful piece of creative. In addition, we have a super active creator influencer program. Then, there are a lot of people interacting with the product who are in verticals we think are exciting for reaching our customer base: fragrance influencers, young athletes or couples creating content about hygiene routines.

When we see resonance of that content organically, we deploy paid dollars behind that and get that message out more broadly. Our philosophy is, when the community’s creating stuff that’s resonating organically, we want to light it on fire.

With most of the influencers connected to the brand being big on Twitch, what role do Instagram and TikTok play?

Twitch still has a role, but it’s episodic. We might do four or five big things a year on Twitch, but they’re more event-based whereas TikTok is day in and day out. We’ve done the work and understand where the customer is, and not to say that they’re not on Instagram, but they’re on TikTok more. We spend a lot of our time, energy and focus there.

This customer base treats Instagram a little differently. It’s more of a fashion lookbook or editorial magazine for this demo. TikTok is raw and uncut. There’s definitely a place for both; it’s a matter of what type of creative goes in each place. We’re also starting to think about Snapchat, too, because our community is super active there.

What made Target a good partner for the brand, and how has it been performing there?

We went to them when we had the idea for the brand, and they absolutely saw the vision. We lean into design and try to differentiate ourselves visually. That is a good fit for the Target ethos and what they’re focused on right now. We put a ton of time into product design for the LTOs to make the Target exclusives exciting for those customers.

We doubled our presence in Target this past February. We went from about 16 to about 26 SKUs and from one to two shelves. That was in recognition of the great performance out of the gate, and we’re excited to mutually grow that business. We launched the brand about a month and a half ago on Amazon as well, and we’re excited to be on that digital platform. We view that as a critical growth vector.

What’s the strategy for Amazon?

Amazon is really driving U.S. accessibility. If you aren’t able to get into a Target, it’s about being available. The core of our marketing is creator and influencer, and Amazon becomes another place where the consumer can access the product and get it to their house next day. Accessibility and leaning into that value prop for Amazon is what we’re doing.

The other thing that I think is interesting is, when you’re on Amazon, you are among all products. We compete well when we’re in that broad ecosystem from mass brands through masstige and all the way up to premium brands.

Where do you see the men’s fragrance space heading?

The customer is getting sophisticated. It’ll be like, “Hey, this is today’s Lyric combo” and it’ll be Creed Aventus, it’ll be a body lotion from a competitor, wink, wink, and it’ll be the Tone fresh on-the-go cologne. For me, coming from a Sephora ecosystem when I was at Nécessaire and seeing what Sol de Janeiro and other brands did and the layering world and what that body and hair mist business unlocked, I see the men’s consumer starting to show those same inclinations.

They’re doing it with designer cologne and lotion, for sure. We see a lot of men interested in combining lotion with fragrance from a longevity perspective. We see it moving from a treat into something that’s part of the day-to-day routine. What’s exciting for us is that it’s not just a department store or specialty boutique cologne business anymore.

In the case of our body wash, we spend a lot of time trying to make sure that the in-shower experience is great and your skin feels great after, but we also want the scent to last on skin. We’re going through the different steps of the grooming routine and trying to meet that customer with scent. It’s a choose your own adventure, but we want to have the options available.

What are short- and long-term goals for Tone?

Continuing to spread the awareness of the brand. I have a lot of respect for what established brands have been able to accomplish, but we feel like our proposition today is really aligned with where consumers are and are increasingly going. The No. 1 thing we focus on at the company is, how can we get that message out to more people and bring them under the tent?

We’re also working on new product form factors that we’ll be entering next in 2027 with the brand, looking at different ways of doing deodorant, body wash and maybe even entering the shave category in a fragrance-oriented way.