Puneet Nanda spent much of his career in the background, churning out new products in the admittedly stodgy oral hygiene category. Now he’s the CEO of GuruNanda, the top-selling brand on TikTok Shop and a social media star in his own right.

His California-based account has 263,000+ followers and 5.8 million likes, numbers that he obtained from a daily regimen of content creation that might exhaust an energetic Gen Z influencer, let alone a 56-year-old product designer.

“I post 10 videos a day, so that’s what I do 10 hours, 12 hours a day,” he told Retail Brew. “Seventy percent of my job at the company is producing videos.”

The videos are a mix of health advice and information about his oral wellness products, the most popular of which is Cocomint Pulling Oil, selling 428,000+ units and raking in $3.35 million in revenue in the last 30 days, according to Tabcut.com.

The product is part of a unique crop of “TikTok-native” brands that are selling well on the social media marketplace due to their success getting noticed on the platform’s somewhat mysterious algorithms.

GuruNanda’s first big boost in sales from TikTok came after a video featuring its product went viral, but now its CEO (or “Chief Essential Oil,” as Nanda’s title is listed on LinkedIn) is hoping to sustain that interest with his own herculean efforts to pump out content.

Keep reading here.—AV

The journey from unidentified website visitor to loyal customer has many moving parts.

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Nobody wants to be put in a box, even a company famous for putting things in boxes. Take FabFitFun, the DTC brand that’s sold subscription gift boxes targeted at women—with products spanning beauty, fashion, fitness, and wellness—for 12 years. It’s now expanding to target a member of the household who’s adorable (but not a child) and hirsute (but not a spouse).

The company has acquired PupBox, a monthly subscription box for dogs, from Petco, for a price that FabFitFun declined to disclose.

Paws marketing: Daniel Broukhim, co-CEO and co-founder of FabFitFun, told Retail Brew that PupBox will continue to “maintain its own identity and character.” Asked if it might bundle the two subscriptions together in the future for a cheaper price than getting them individually, he said such details are TBD.

“It’s probably something we’ll look at,” Broukhim replied. “There’s a good chance that there’s going to be some sort of bundling like that.”

Keep reading here.—AAN

On his first earnings call as Solo Brand’s new CEO since his predecessor stepped down, Chris Metz on Thursday outlined his plan to help scale the struggling direct-to-consumer brand.

The company is currently conducting a full strategic review of its business with the goal of producing a long-term plan, and Metz said that based on his “initial observations, everything I have seen can be fixed.”

Metz, whose resume includes stints at Black & Decker and Vista Outdoor, told investors that the company needed to “fix our D2C or direct-to-consumer business and return this channel to growth.”

Former CEO John Merris previously told Retail Brew that the company was embracing wholesale to help drive sales, and that the shift could cannibalize DTC sales in the near-term. However, he stressed that wholesale—though generally less profitable—could eventually draw return customers back to the direct channel. He also emphasized that a bigger wholesale presence would increase brand awareness, reducing the need for ad spending.

Metz is now singing a different tune.

Keep reading here.—AV