An Untapped Trend With Built In Virality (AKA Free Traffic)

What’s up? You’re reading Founder Runway. Today we’ve got a sticky one (literally).

Let’s get into it:

• This week’s new trend: Pimple Patches

• A pimple patch business idea to ride the wave yourself

• The full breakdown of how to grow a pimple patch brand for free

Trend: Pimple Patches

Pimple patches have been on a steady uptick for the past 5 years, and there’s room for a huge boom.

Why?

Well, there’s not a super strong player in the DTC space (I’ll get into that in a bit).

Pimple patches are these small little patches you can stick on a pimple before you go to bed, and it sucks all the nasty sh*t out of it - almost “magically” reducing their size overnight.

Now, here’s the backstory on the competition: 

Mighty Patch - This product is made by the company Hero. The product works wonders (I use them myself), but has very little online presence and pretty shotty branding.

Starface - A company started in 2012 that focused a lot more on DTC, but… the product sucks and they get a lot of negative reviews on social media for it. Despite this fact, they’ve done $21 million in revenue in 2022. Not too shabby.

There’s a huge market gap here, which is why I chose this to be one of the first posts.

If a new player can come in and combine the efficacy of Mighty Patch, with the online presence of Starface, the market is wide open.

Before I drop the full breakdown, someone promise me you’ll do this before I do.

Business Idea: ClearPatch

Problem: The biggest problem in the skincare industry is products usually fall into one of two categories. Either they’re effective or they are aesthetically pleasing. Rarely does a brand have both. Even more specific to pimple patches, there isn’t a huge DTC presence to it. Starface is very in your face, with vibrant colors, even on the pimple patches themselves.

Solution: ClearPatch will be close to transparent, matching the skin tone of the user. It will contain efficacious ingredients like salicylic acid and hydrocolloid to ensure the product’s effectiveness. Branded in a minimalistic style to match the minimalistic look on the face when it’s worn, ClearPatch will be able to capitalize on the growing trend.

Customer Acquisition: This product was made for TikTok, yet has very little presence. TikTok shop will allow for a fast, free, and high volume number of sales if you can get the right UGC behind it.

Why is it good for TikTok?

Well, who suffers from the most acne? Teens. Teens are the main persona of TikTok. It’s at a low-budget price point, allowing for a high conversion rate with a short sales cycle.

But the most important part is the product has virality built into it. The user puts the patch on overnight, wakes up, and can literally see the goop that the patch pulled out of the pimple.

I feel like I’m writing a sales pitch for pimple patches right now.

PRO TIP: Check out @jimmyfarley on twitter. He can connect you with a ton of UGC creators who are great at going viral.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you don’t know about the opportunities of TikTok shop right now. Look into them ASAP!

Around The Web

• This 9-figure founder reveals his Influencer Marketing Playbook (link)

• A brand I’m watching this year (link)

• The 5-step roadmap to launch your DTC brand in 30 days (link)

That’s all for today!