The Dream Scenario that Turns Into a Trap

Every founder wants what Sol de Janeiro built, a fan base that behaves less like customers and more like believers. The brand’s perfume mists became a daily ritual, especially among younger shoppers who discovered them during the pandemic and turned scents into identity signals. The commercial upside was massive, with the mist line driving extraordinary sales and pushing the brand into blockbuster territory.

Yet the more interesting story is what happened next. Founder and CEO Heela Yang admitted that “the mist category just overtook the brand,” and that the company now needs to “take back the narrative” and return to its roots in body care. That is not a product issue, but a positioning crisis caused by success.

The Hidden Cost of Winning Too Fast

Breakout products create a shortcut to scale by compressing discovery, desire, and repeat purchase into a single loop. They also create a shortcut to being misunderstood. Once consumers and retailers decide what you are, they filter everything you do through that single lens.

That’s why this moment matters. Sol de Janeiro has reached scale, but it also hit a “plateau” after years of explosive growth, with retail data suggesting a decline across US channels this year. Whether or not the brand remains huge, the meaning of the slowdown is psychological; once growth cools, founders have to confront whether their brand has depth beyond the hero product.

Entrepreneurs should read this as a warning. Virality can build revenue faster than brand architecture can form, and if the brand doesn’t deliberately build the architecture, the hero SKU becomes the blueprint by default.

A Founder’s Lesson in Narrative Control

Yang’s phrasing is unusually direct, deliberating the strategy to “take back the narrative.” That is the language of reputation, not product development. It implies Sol de Janeiro is working against a story the market has locked in, where the brand equals mists, and everything else is secondary.

For founders, this is the reminder that brand positioning isn’t what they write on their website. It’s what people repeat when they are not in the room. If the audience says, “Oh, that’s the best brand,” then the brand has a narrowing identity.

The brutal part is that the narrowing is often driven by the company’s own strongest performance. The market rewards what’s easy to understand, and a single iconic product is very easy to understand.

Don’t Confuse a Gateway Product With Your Full Identity.

A breakout product is often a gateway, but gateways are not destinations. Sol de Janeiro’s mists likely acted as the entry point into the brand, the shareable object that turned casual buyers into collectors. But when the gateway becomes the entire experience, you lose the ability to expand what people come to you for.

Entrepreneurs can avoid this by building deliberate “bridges” early: clear product ladders, obvious next steps, and messaging that constantly links the hero to the bigger promise. If the hero product is the first chapter, the brand still needs to teach consumers what chapter two is supposed to be.

Otherwise, when it finally tries to diversify and not launch new products, it will be trying to change a habit.

How to Mature Without Losing Heat

Sol de Janeiro’s December launch of a new body cream, positioned with upgraded ingredients and a more skincare-coded story, signals a return to what the founder calls the brand’s core, meaning body care paired with scent. The intent is also demographic. Yang is trying to re-engage older customers, likely in their 30s and beyond, without alienating the younger fans who made the mists explode.

This is another entrepreneur lesson: growth can skew your audience faster than your brand can adapt. If a younger segment adopts the product intensely, the company has to decide whether they are building a forever brand or a generational moment. The answer changes product strategy, pricing, tone, and even distribution choices.

Sol de Janeiro is attempting the hardest version, expanding age range while keeping the cult energy intact.

What Founders Should Actually Take From This

The core takeaway is that the best seller can become your brand’s ceiling if you don’t actively define the brand beyond it.

Sol de Janeiro’s story shows that founders should design for three things from the beginning. First, make sure your hero product clearly represents the larger promise, so the market learns the brand concept, not just the object. Second, build a path from the hero to other categories early, so diversification feels natural, not like a rebrand. Third, track narrative signals as closely as sales signals, because perception can drift long before revenue does.

Because the hardest thing in branding is not getting attention. It’s getting remembered for the right reason.