Sol de Janeiro is No. 39 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2024. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.
Body care brand Sol de Janeiro became a bona fide phenomenon in 2023 by releasing new products like they’re Taylor Swift albums—and inspiring almost as much excitement.
Driven by its sugary-sweet, vacation-themed fragrance mists, some of them limited edition, the company’s gross sales nearly tripled last year, earning $625.5 million.
Collecting each scent is now something of a sport among the brand’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha superfans, with the company’s 18th fragrance, Cheirosa ’59 Perfume Mist, released in January.
While the company’s drops have grabbed consumers’ attention—Google searches for its perfume mists, a lighter product that smells best when layered copiously, rose nearly 30% year over year in 2023—Sol de Janeiro’s social media presence has kept them trending, with one bottle sold every seven seconds worldwide. To date, the company has garnered 1 billion TikTok views on #soldejaneiro and more than 825 million views for the hashtag #cheirosa, with an astounding 75% of the brand’s top-viewed TikToks exclusively featuring its mists.
Much of this social media love has come from organic mentions from influencers such as Alix Earle, Mikayla Nogueira, Zara McDermott, and JoJo Siwa.
Sol de Janeiro also stayed true to its global audiences’ tastes, proving wrong those who warned early on that its scents were too sweet and would turn off premium customers.
“Authenticity is our approach to everything,” says founder and CEO Heela Yang. “We’ve never tried to fit into anyone else’s idea of what a beauty brand should be.”
Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.