She’s the “Gen Z Boss and a Mini” heard round the internet, sparking endless discussions, misogynistic insults, and tons and tons of memes.
But for Rachael Wilde, the entire viral moment is exactly what she imagined when she launched her company, tbh Skincare, more than four years ago.
“Having fun and being playful is at the core of our ethos as a business,” Wilde tells me via email from her home in Sydney, Australia.
Wilde—who is, yes, Gen Z at age 27—co-founded the upstart acne care brand at just 23 and is now reckoning with a very modern challenge as a business owner: What happens when a silly video you make with your team on your social channels blows up and brings international attention to your brand?
Well, it’s a bit nuts, but Wilde and her team (which, she says, is 90 percent women) are rising to the challenge. First up, they launched a “Gen Z Boss and Mini” bundle on their website to capitalize on the “huge increase” in web traffic and are now figuring out how to engage further with their new fans, especially in the US. (For those in the States who want to get the bundle, a rep for the brand tells me that sadly, the brand is not available here yet.)
“The past few days have felt like a whirlwind, but I guess in moments of craziness some of the best ideas are born,” Wilde says.
Amid said whirlwind, Wilde took some time to re-introduce her team and brand, as well as answer our most pressing questions about her now-viral business.
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Glamour: How and when did tbh Skincare get started?
Rachael Wilde: I founded tbh Skincare and launched the brand to market in March 2020, when I was 23 years old. I was lucky enough to come across the technology that’s now in our hero products—our acne hack spot treatment and anti-bacterial cleanser—when I was working in the medical devices industry prior to founding the business. Through working within this field, I came across a medical research and development company who had developed a technology that was being used in hospital and healthcare but also had the capacity to help control breakouts. Long story short, I actually ended up trialing the product out of the lab on my own skin. This is really where the very first seedlings of tbh Skincare were born.
The brand is especially playful, bright, and colorful for an acne company. Is that intentional?
Creating the brand and the community around tbh Skincare was so important to me personally. This category lacked innovation, fun, and human connection. The link between experiencing acne and the prevalence of mental health conditions such as depression is pretty well researched, and it’s something that I lived out first hand.
How has the brand grown since its founding?
In 2023, three years into the business, we merged with another Australian based brand, BOOST LAB, to create a new parent company: York St Brands. The merger means that tbh Skincare and BOOST LAB operate as their own brands but are now housed under the York St Brands umbrella, with one central team, shared revenue, greater efficiencies, and a focus on global expansion. We haven’t just seen significant revenue growth from the merger either. Over the last 12 months we’ve scaled all parts of the business pretty significantly, including the team which has gone from 8 to 27 people in the space of 9 months… We have a split of 90% females and 10% males in the office at York St Brands. Our CEO, COO, and Head of Innovation are all males, and the rest are women.
Have you always had a big social presence?
From the early days of the business, our social media channels were the primary places we connected with new and existing customers. Because we treated the business page very much as a personal insight into the brand and the people behind it, we saw pretty quick growth…What we’ve learnt as a business is how to be agile with our social media content.
Why did you decide to make this video, and how did everyone pick their descriptions?
As with most of our social media content, this decision was made on the fly. We saw the trend, which was created by a group of English girls, and thought it was hilarious so we wanted to do our own rendition. We basically just gathered in a circle in the office and made up what we were going to say as we went along. This is typically how we go about creating content in the office! Everyone is having so much fun with it that it usually flows pretty easily; it’s never too planned. I think that’s why it also resonated so highly, because of the energy in our team, who you can tell just have so much fun when creating this kind of content.
When did you realize it was going viral?
We posted it on a regular Monday evening, and it didn’t immediately go viral. It was actually overnight (in the early hours of the morning) that it started gaining a lot of views. When we woke up, the video was at over 1M views. The comments at the start were pretty neutral and what we typically see on any viral video. It was only when it was reposted on X (Twitter) that we noticed things really started to shift. Soon after, it got turned into a meme about HR layoffs on X as well, which gathered another 12M+ impressions that same day. Then we started seeing “gen z boss in a mini” trending on our threads. From there we knew it had taken on a life of its own.
How has it impacted your business? Are you seeing more sales and followers?
We have seen a spike in followers for sure since the video went viral and a huge increase in web traffic to tbh Skincare. We can see that we’ve reached a whole new audience, particularly in the US. Since all of this happened we have also launched a “gen z boss and a mini” bundle, which offers all the best-selling products to newbies as a great place to start with the brand. It definitely hasn’t been bad for sales. We’re stoked to have a brand new community of people to talk to online as well.
You made a video responding to troll comments. Why did you decide to do it?
To be completely honest, this was also a decision made very much on the fly (and actually before the trolling reached its absolute peak). We had only just re-activated our account on X to read through all the comments when the idea popped into our heads. We thought, what a fun way to clapback to all the hate then to turn it into the trend itself! Thankfully this landed on the right side of TikTok and received lots of support from our existing and new-found community. At the end of the day, we’re choosing to focus on the positive comments as opposed to the negative and decided to just ride the wave and stay true to ourselves.
How else will you capitalize on this viral fame beyond your “Gen Z Boss and a Mini” bundle?
We thought if people were going to be coming to the tbh Skincare website, we may as well play into the viral moment and offer our best-selling products in a convenient bundle. The past few days have felt like a whirlwind, but I guess in moments of craziness some of the best ideas are born. I’m proud of the team for how they’ve handled this and the way in which they have supported one another. We will continue to be guided by our core mission and stay true to who we are, and that is always our guiding compass through some of the uncertain moments… Off the back of our videos on TikTok and Instagram, we have received so much support in our comments from people who say they’re running to purchase the new bundle as well as apply for a job at tbh Skincare themselves and that it is their “dream company and boss to work for.”
We just plan to continue using our social media platform to have fun and engage with our customers in a way that entertains them and brings them joy. Not everybody is going to love us, but we know our core customers do, and we are OK with that.
The post The ‘Gen Z Boss and a Mini’ Knew Exactly What She Was Doing appeared first on Glamour.
