The Waitlist Economy: How Rhode Built a Billion-Dollar Exit on 1 Million Email Addresses
Fanfare Team
Fanfare Team
6/23/2025 · 10 min

The Waitlist Economy: How Rhode Built a Billion-Dollar Exit on 1 Million Email Addresses

$1 billion. 3 years. 1 million emails.

That's not a valuation formula. That's Rhode Skin's actual trajectory from waitlist to acquisition by e.l.f. Beauty.

But here's what should make every brand founder lose sleep: Rhode didn't invent some breakthrough peptide technology. They didn't have first-mover advantage in lip treatments. They didn't even have the biggest celebrity founder.

What they had was 1 million people begging to buy before a single product existed.

And they're not alone. Across every category—from MrBeast's chocolate empire to Hermès' century-old bag game—the biggest winners aren't competing on product. They're competing on pre-launch audience.

Welcome to the Waitlist Economy, where your email list is worth more than your inventory, and the sale happens months before the product.

The Numbers That Rewrote the Playbook

Let's start with the data that made Wall Street care about email lists:

The Conversion Chasm:

  • Traditional e-commerce: 2-4% conversion
  • Well-managed waitlists: 25-85% conversion
  • Rhode's Peptide Lip Treatment: 60-80% conversion
  • Prime Hydration: 70%+ conversion
  • Supreme drops: Near 100% (if you can click fast enough)

The Timeline Tax:

  • Waitlist conversion within 30 days: 50%
  • Waitlist conversion after 90 days: <20%
  • The sweet spot: 30-90 day cycles from tease to drop

The Loyalty Multiplier:

  • Waitlist customers show 20-30% higher lifetime value
  • 40% higher repeat purchase rates
  • 60% more referrals

Translation: Your waitlist isn't just a list. It's a revenue spigot you can turn on at will.

Rhode's Masterclass: From TikTok to Term Sheet

Hailey Bieber didn't wake up and decide to launch a beauty brand. She spent 18 months building an audience around a vibe: glazed donut skin.

The Pre-Launch Timeline:

  • April 2021: "Glazed donut skin" TikTok hits 9M+ views
  • Next 12 months: 134 YouTube skincare videos with experts
  • Zero product mentions. Pure education and aspiration.
  • June 2022: Launch with 440,000 people on the lip treatment waitlist alone

The Execution:

  • All shades sold out in 3 days
  • During restocks: 36 units of Peptide Glazing Fluid sold per second
  • The "World of Rhode" Coachella installation: 14-hour camping lines
  • Year 1: $10M revenue
  • Year 2: $50M revenue
  • Year 3: $100M revenue
  • Year 4: $212M revenue and a billion-dollar exit

The lesson? Rhode didn't launch a product. They activated a community they'd been nurturing for years.

The Category Killers: Different Products, Same Playbook

Beauty & Skincare: Authenticity as Algorithm

Fenty Beauty demolished the industry with 40 shades and Rihanna's truth: "I couldn't find my shade." Result? $100M in month one. The "Fenty Effect" forced every major brand to expand their shade ranges. Conversion rate? Off the charts because the audience had been waiting decades for someone to see them.

Glossier played the long game: 4 years building Into The Gloss blog. 874,000 monthly visitors before a single product. Their "What's Your Dream Face Wash?" post got 377 detailed responses that became their product roadmap. When you build what people literally asked for, conversion isn't a question.

Rare Beauty hit $350M revenue by doing what Glossier did, but on TikTok. Mental health messaging + micro-influencers + sub-$30 pricing = the #2 cosmetics brand for Gen Z teens.

Food & Beverage: The Hype Hydration Model

Prime Hydration is what happens when you weaponize social media. Logan Paul + KSI = 100M+ combined followers. Launch strategy? Intentional scarcity. Kids paying £400 for 12-packs on eBay. First-year retail sales: $250M. Current valuation: $3.2 billion.

MrBeast's Feastables turned YouTube views into chocolate sales. 127M+ subscribers watching videos with integrated product placement. First-year revenue: $250M with $20M+ profit. The SMS list of 200K+ needed a 30-person response team. When your waitlist is that engaged, it's not a list—it's a movement.

Chamberlain Coffee proves authentic passion beats manufactured hype. Emma Chamberlain documented her coffee obsession for years. 30M+ followers watched her evolution from Starbucks runs to home brewing. The brand built 200K+ SMS subscribers year one and expanded from DTC to Walmart. Authenticity scales.

Fashion: The Anti-Waitlist Waitlist

Supreme doesn't do waitlists. They do something more powerful: predictable scarcity. Every Thursday, 11 AM. Traffic spikes 16,800%. Everything sells out in minutes. Minimum 300% resale markup on box logos. Annual revenue: $500M. Marketing spend: $0.

Yeezy Gap proved dormant brands can resurrect through exclusive access. Result: Gap's highest single-day sales ever. 70% of customers were new to Gap. One collaboration reactivated a sleeping giant.

Hermès turned waiting into luxury itself. Birkin bags with multi-year waitlists starting at $10K+. The waitlist IS the product. When scarcity becomes status, price becomes irrelevant.

Digital Collectibles: Community as Currency

Bored Ape Yacht Club built a 211,845+ member Discord before most people knew what an NFT was. Total trading volume: $1.6 billion by 2022. The product wasn't the ape. It was belonging to the club.

Pudgy Penguins proved communities outlive their creators. Acquired for $2.5M as a failing project. Transformed into a $10M toy business. 750,000 units sold. 3,100 Walmart stores. 1.4M Instagram followers. The lesson? Communities are assets, not audiences.

The Tactical Reality: What Actually Works

Content That Converts: The 40/30/20/10 Rule

Successful pre-launch content isn't random. It's formulaic:

  • 40% Educational (how-to's, industry insights)
  • 30% Entertainment (behind-the-scenes, lifestyle)
  • 20% Inspiration (vision, success stories)
  • 10% Direct promotion

Results: 35% higher engagement than pure promotional content. Behind-the-scenes content performs 85% better on TikTok.

Platform Optimization Cheat Sheet

Instagram: Story highlights for waitlist signups = 15% conversion boost TikTok: 15-30 second videos, 2-3 hashtags, educational hooks YouTube: Clear CTAs at 0:30 and end = 40% higher email signups Email: 3-7 emails over 30-45 days. More than that? Fatigue. Less? Forgotten.

The Referral Reality Check

Forget linear rewards. Milestone-based programs dominate:

  • 3 referrals: Early access
  • 5 referrals: Exclusive colorway
  • 10 referrals: Lifetime VIP status

Result: Top 20% of referrers generate 80% of total referrals.

Community Building That Actually Builds

Discord Done Right:

  • 5-8 initial channels (more is chaos)
  • 30-40% weekly participation rate
  • 50+ daily messages in active channels
  • 1-2 major events monthly with 15-25% attendance

The Tier System That Prints Money:

  • Platinum (first 25): 85-95% conversion
  • Gold (first 100): 70-80% conversion
  • Silver (first 500): 50-60% conversion
  • Bronze (first 1000): 30-40% conversion

The Spigot Effect: Your Secret Revenue Weapon

Here's what most brands miss: A waitlist isn't a one-time asset. It's a revenue spigot you control.

Activation Patterns:

  • Weekly: Engagement updates
  • Monthly: Major announcements
  • Quarterly: Actual launches
  • Annually: Flagship events

Warning Signs Your List Is Dying:

  • Open rates below 20%
  • Announcement engagement dropping
  • Conversion rates declining

Resurrection Tactics:

  • Exclusive "we miss you" access
  • Behind-the-scenes content blast
  • Referral reward reactivation

The brands that win don't just build lists. They build machines that print money on demand.

The Three Pillars Every Winner Shares

After analyzing dozens of breakout brands, three patterns emerge:

1. Authentic Founder Narrative

  • Rhode: Hailey's genuine skincare journey
  • Fenty: Rihanna's shade-matching struggle
  • Prime: Logan and KSI's rivalry-turned-partnership

Your story matters more than your product.

2. Strategic Scarcity Without Fakeness

  • Supreme: Same time, every week
  • Hermès: Relationship-based allocation
  • Rhode: Genuine sellouts, not artificial limits

Make it real or don't make it at all.

3. Community Cultivation as Core Competency

  • Glossier: Blog readers became board advisors
  • BAYC: Members got commercial rights
  • Feastables: Viewers became evangelists

Your customers aren't walking wallets. They're your distribution network.

The Bottom Line

Most brands run a drop and never ask: who showed up?

You drive 100K visitors, capture 2,000 customers, and let 98,000 potential superfans vanish into the ether. That's not marketing. That's malpractice.

The waitlist economy isn't about collecting emails. It's about building armies. Rhode didn't sell skincare—they activated a movement they'd been building for 18 months. Prime didn't launch a beverage—they monetized a relationship with 100 million fans. Supreme doesn't do marketing—they programmed a weekly ritual.

Your next launch shouldn't start with a product. It should start with a promise. Build the audience. Nurture the obsession. Then, and only then, open the spigot.

Because in the waitlist economy, the sale isn't the endpoint. It's the beginning of something bigger.

The only question is: Are you building a list, or are you building a war chest?

Ready to turn your next launch into a data goldmine? Fanfare captures every queue, click, and close call—feeding your CRM and letting you build a real community, not just a customer list. Stop letting 98% of your launch-day traffic disappear.

Download our playbook at fanfare.io/playbook