Entering into a very unpopular track, the two guys created a brand with annual sales of nearly 60 million!

In recent years, the global e-commerce market has been fiercely competitive, and personal care, as a popular track, has long been crowded with industry giants such as L'Oreal, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Despite this, the American personal care brand Bravo Sierra has successfully broken through the trend with its own strength and an average annual growth rate of 80%.

Data shows that Bravo Sierra's annual sales reached US$8 million (approximately RMB 58.099 million) in its first year, and its cumulative financing amount exceeded US$35.7 million (approximately RMB 290 million). It is also the first personal care brand to be qualified to directly supply to the US Department of Defense.

This undoubtedly shows that when "military needs" becomes a good business, unpopular products can also carve out a space of their own in the cross-border e-commerce market.

Bravo Sierra focuses on vertical groups

Founded in 2018, Bravo Sierra is the first U.S. brand dedicated to personal care products for active and veteran military personnel .

Its founders are two men with complicated backgrounds - Benjamin Bernet and Justin Guilbert. According to the introduction, they are veterans in the field of consumer goods. They have worked at L'Oreal, responsible for the business of major brands such as Kiehl's and Maybelline, and also founded their own beauty care brand. They have considerable advantages in industry experience and market insight.

Around 2018, the U.S. men's care market ushered in a new growth point, and a number of men's DTC personal care brands such as Dollar Shave Club and Harry's achieved great success in this trend. At this time, the founder of Bravo Sierra discovered the potential opportunities in the men's personal care market and quickly seized the business opportunity to establish the brand Bravo Sierra.

At that time, capitalists also realized the huge potential of this market and were particularly enthusiastic about investing in such brands. Therefore, Bravo Sierra successfully won a seed round investment of US$6.7 million and officially entered the market.

Unlike other brands' target audiences, Bravo Sierra focuses on a very niche user group - military personnel .

Seeing this, many people will wonder why it is a soldier?

First , data from Harvard Business Review shows that the size of the U.S. non-war commercial market exceeds $200 billion, of which military users spend more than $100 billion annually on non-war needs. This market has considerable potential for growth.

Secondly , although there were a wide variety of care products on the American market at that time, personal care products designed for this group of people were extremely rare, and it could even be said that they were basically blank.

Furthermore , soldiers are usually in harsh environments with wind, sand, high temperature, and exposure to the sun . The surface of their skin is inevitably oily and sweaty frequently, and traditional men's skin care products cannot meet their daily needs at all.

Based on the above points, the founder of Bravo Sierra resolutely decided to produce personal care products that are suitable for various harsh environments, durable, convenient, have strong cleaning power and have a wide coverage .

In order to provide a better user experience for this group of people, Bravo Sierra has invested a lot of energy in production research and development. In addition, it has also formed a testing team composed of 1,000 active-duty military personnel to collect real and specific feedback through field testing , thereby continuously improving product performance.

Annual revenue exceeds 58 million, financing is nearly 300 million

Currently, Bravo Sierra products include shampoo, shower gel, shaving cream, deodorant, antibacterial wipes, lip balm, moisturizer, sunscreen , etc. Each one is designed and developed for extreme environments to directly address user needs and pain points.

However, Bravo Sierra has only five core categories . For example, the three-in-one gel directly integrates shampoo, shower gel and shaving cream into one, which is convenient to use and carry, but the efficacy is not compressed. In terms of design, Bravo Sierra's packaging is simple and business-like, which is extremely in line with the characteristics of soldiers.

Once these products were launched, they were recognized by numerous military consumers. Data showed that Bravo Sierra's sales in the first year had reached 8 million US dollars (about 58.099 million RMB) .

Since its establishment , Bravo Sierra has not only had a large number of loyal users, but also won the recognition of the US military and strong support from the capital market.

In terms of financing, it won a seed round investment of US$6.7 million just after entering the market, and later successively obtained US$12 million in round A financing and US$17 million in round B financing. Today, its cumulative financing amount exceeds US$35.7 million (about RMB 290 million) .

In addition, with its outstanding sales performance, Bravo Sierra successfully became one of the 25 most outstanding companies selected by Forbes in the past few years , successfully standing out in the super niche field of military personal care , and becoming a global military personal care brand that has attracted much attention .

How to move from “niche” to “mainstream”?

It is a cliché that no one's success is easy, and Bravo Sierra is no exception. If focusing on vertical groups is the stepping stone for Bravo Sierra to successfully enter the market, then the innovative marketing strategy is the catalyst for the brand to expand its popularity and become famous worldwide .

Entering the independent site, you can find that its page is mainly gray and white, with a high-end and simple design, highlighting the brand's professional and reliable image; in the page introduction, it is also good at telling brand stories to narrow the distance between itself and consumers; moreover, its webpage directly announces that part of the income will be donated to military families and veterans' communities, and provides discounts to this group of people, which has invisibly driven a large number of consumers to buy.

At the same time, it is also good at using social media platforms to increase brand exposure.

On TikTok , the official Bravo Sierra account has more than 21,000 followers, and the number of video likes has reached more than 160,000. Its videos not only share product introductions, but also focus on sharing the daily training and living environment of the military community. The content is relaxed and funny, attracting a large number of passers-by to become fans.

On Instagram , Bravo Sierra has more than 200,000 followers. Different from TikTok, Bravo Sierra mainly cooperates with bloggers in vertical fields such as military bloggers, gun experts, sports and fitness experts to promote products through this platform, so as to accurately reach more consumer groups.

In addition, Bravo Sierra entered the top 100 Best Sellers list on Amazon and was recommended by Amazon's Choice. On Walmart, it used "online + offline" dual channels to market and promote its products, which further expanded the brand's market share.

Today, Bravo Sierra has become a well-known brand in the military personal care market. In the future, with the continuous updating and optimization of its products and marketing strategies, its market influence and sales will increase significantly.

The success of Bravo Sierra has undoubtedly provided valuable experience for other brands and sellers. It also proves that although there are many giants in the red ocean, if you focus on niche vertical tracks, accurately position your products, and develop good marketing strategies, even the most unpopular products will have the opportunity to achieve innovative breakthroughs .