When Lana Mushamel began her independent nail care business 12 years ago, selling glossy gel polish and salon-tier nail care tools, she didn’t expect to become an expert in social media.

The Los Angeles native said she was depressed at her office job as a purchaser for military equipment parts and began Twinkled T with her sister to pay homage to their longtime hobby.

The pair started in an 8-by-10-foot shed in their parents’ backyard before graduating to inside the house, where Mushamel lived. 

Fast forward 12 years, and some things have changed: The company went from an 80-square-foot shed to an 800-square-foot office. The company has expanded its employee base from two to a whopping three (except when a product suddenly sees massive demand – then the entire family puts on disposable gloves and gets to work). But the biggest change of all has been the evolution of marketing Twinkled T on social media: The company began on Etsy, then launched its own website, then jumped onto Amazon. Most recently, the company found virality on TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of the popular vertical video social media platform.

“So really just going with the waves of e-commerce,” Mushamel said. 

Mushamel may have to pivot once again. The U.S. is moving toward banning TikTok in the country, though it’s unclear if President elect Donald Trump will continue to helm the cause.

It’s nothing new for direct-to-consumer brands – before social media giants like Facebook became massive, expensive advertising hubs, venture-backed, podcast-ads-famous companies like Marina del Rey-based Dollar Shave Club could use the platform for cheap to reach the eyes of new customers. DTC companies have long been subjected to changing ad regulations as they battle for popularity alongside their preestablished conglomerate competitors. 

Striking gold

After spending hours every day talking to chemists, dermatologists and product designers, sister duo Taylor and Casey Capuano launched their first product in 2022 via a simple Instagram post to a very small audience: a new kind of nipple cover that could, in some cases, provide the same support and functionality as a traditional bra. With no investors or substantial social media followings of their own, they began making hundreds of TikToks to promote CAKES Body. 

“I called Casey and I’m like, this is so embarrassing, first of all, posting all these videos about my nipple covers and no one’s watching them,” Taylor Capuano said. “Then overnight we went from selling probably a couple of hundred units total to thousands of units, completely sold out of inventory.”

The TikTok algorithm blasted one of their videos to thousands of viewers, turning the CAKES into a viral sensation on the platform. The pair hired workers from Taskrabbit to help package orders. 

The company saw $1 million in revenue in its first year without spending a single dollar on ads. Today, the Capuano sisters would have had to spend $250,000 to get that same number – the company said it makes roughly $50,000 for every 1 million views. Today, TikTok accounts for 30% of CAKES’ business. 

“Coming from a traditional marketing background, when I think about other entrepreneurs and small businesses especially, (we) have the opportunity to compete with big brands and big budgets now if you are creative,” Taylor Capuano said.

Mushamel began experimenting with TikTok Shop when the social media company was still incubating its beta version of the now-successful social commerce platform, looking into consumer trends TikTok gathered and learning the ever-changing language of the algorithm. She began making videos against the backdrop of boxes and bubble wrap, explaining how she prices products while sitting on the floor and wrapping shipments or talking about the history of the business while wearing pink disposable gloves and carefully pouring product into bottles. 

“Being in the business for over 10 years now, staying relevant has truly been the hardest part of business,” Mushamel said. “So discovering new avenues and seeing that other people are picking up on those avenues, I always quickly jump on them.”

Today, the company has 363,000 followers and has sold more than 164,000 items. She had three products go viral at different times: a nail oil, a Czech glass nail file, and the brand’s flagship gel polish. Exposure on TikTok helped the company triple its Shopify sales year over year and double its Amazon.com Inc. sales. But despite cultivating multiple storefronts on various online platforms for over a decade, TikTok sales rule them all, increasing the company’s revenue by 1,900% in 2024.

“(TikTok) did a good job onboarding sellers there,” said Eric Dahan, chief executive of creator commerce agency Mighty Joy. “It was already a good discovery engine for products. And so they just had to have the ‘buy now’ button.” 

Instability in the future

When Mushamel founded Twinkled T more than a decade ago, she was trying to stand out among a sea of colorful, popular brands lining the nail aisle at drugstores. She began sending free nail art and nail polish to influencers on YouTube in exchange for a shoutout, long before videobloggers turned into an enterprise of affiliate commission fees and contracts. Twinkled T, along with other brands, moved away from YouTube because the cost to be featured was too high, and brands didn’t know which creators would successfully feed their followers into purchasing a product.

“I think the (return on investment) has definitely decreased. It’s so much harder to get a return on your buck nowadays,” Mushamel said. “…But I do think creators are the basis of building your entire business and really getting the word out.”

TikTok is different, Dahan said.

“They show you, as a brand, how different creators perform,” Dahan said. “TikTok is like, these are the people that perform and you can search for that. So you know what you’re getting now and (TikTok has) derisked (affiliate marketing) a lot.” 

With the TikTok ban still looming, the Capuano sisters may lose the flagship platform their business was built on. The company is diversifying by utilizing a paid ads program.

CAKES Body has also set up on the social commerce platforms on Facebook and Instagram, though it’s not getting the same traction. Next, the company will venture into YouTube’s small but burgeoning affiliate marketing program.

“A lot of it is taking learnings from organic (virality) to find the best possible creative, and then turning those into ads,” Casey Capuano said. “And we’ve found they actually translate really well across channels.” 

“There’s definitely the misconception which is: you’re like a viral brand, there’s not a safe strategy here,” Taylor Capuano said. “But it’s turned into more of a predictable formulaic strategy as we’ve diversified.”

Mushamel, who has already spent years bouncing from platform to platform, makes an effort to redirect customers to her website whenever possible. And she is already looking for the new up-and-coming platform to stake her claim in.

“I never thought anything would beat YouTube. And now I look at YouTube and I’m like, that was so boring,” she said. “It’s so crazy. What’s next?”