452Can a small candy brand also go viral?
Has it even sparked a frenzy of enthusiastic pursuit among the younger Generation Z crowd?
This "trend" on TikTok has finally blown into the candy track.
In recent years, the food and beverage industry has been developing strongly. In 2021, the global food and beverage market reached $5.8 trillion, and it is expected to grow to $8.9 trillion by 2026. The candy brandSour Stripshas seized the opportunity in this wave of growth.
Over 20,000 units sold within the first hour of product launch, quickly attracting market attention, and impressing consumers with its bright and bold packaging, mouth-watering flavors, and unique ultra-sour coating!
What exactly is the magic of Sour Strips?
The Birth of the Sour Strips Brand
Fitness YouTube star Maxx Chewning is a die-hard fan with a passion for sour candy! At first, Maxx attracted fans on YouTube by sharing videos of his personal fitness journey, but the account's growth was relatively slow. However, as the platform gradually grew, Maxx slowly built up popularity with the authenticity and uniqueness of his content. Today, his YouTube account has nearly 400,000 subscribers.
Maxx Chewning's YouTube account
Based on his deep affection for sour candy and inspired by his friends' entrepreneurial experiences, Maxx began his journey in 2018 to create a brand dedicated to sour candy lovers. In 2019, he invested $5,000 and officially launched his own candy brand—Sour Strips.
Sour Strips stands out among many candy brands with its intensely sour taste, eye-catching "angry fruit" packaging, and convenient resealable design. In just a few years, Sour Strips has grown from an initial $50,000 investment into a "candy empire" with monthly revenues exceeding $2 million.
Capturing Business Opportunities on TikTok
Sour Strips' achievements are inseparable from its precise marketing strategies on the TikTok platform.
Initially, Maxx Chewning noticed that the hashtag #sourcandy had reached 1.5 billion views on TikTok, indicating that many users, like him, loved eating sour candy.
Thus, he spotted the business opportunity on TikTok and decided to make full use of this popular social media platform to promote his brand.
Image source: TikTok
Breaking the Norm, Founder Joins TikTok First
In 2019, Maxx Chewning registered a personal account on TikTok and stated in his bio that he is the founder of Sour Strips.
On TikTok, Maxx often shares his daily fitness life, maintaining a relaxed and humorous content style as always, while also promoting his sour candy product, Sour Strips.
So far, the @maxxchewning account has successfully attracted 201,300 loyal followers, accumulated 7 million likes, and video views range from tens of thousands to millions, showing impressive influence.
Maxx Chewning's TikTok account and video performance
The Brand Follows Up, Leveraging the Founder’s Popularity to Rise Quickly
After thorough preparation and careful planning, in 2020, the Sour Strips brand officially joined TikTok and quickly rose by leveraging the founder's popularity, cleverly using his personal charm to boost the brand.
Because the founder's personal image and style complement the Sour Strips philosophy, the brand image has become more distinct and three-dimensional.
Currently, this account has accumulated 202,000 followers and 2.6 million likes.
Sour Strips' official TikTok account
Video Creation Formats Are More Acceptable to Users
The content creation of the Sour Strips official account is mainly divided into two types: one is official announcements of new product launches, allowing fans and users to learn about the latest brand updates as soon as possible; the other is using humorous situational comedy to cleverly integrate the product into users' daily life scenarios, thereby sparking their strong interest and deep sense of identification with the product in a unique way.
Image source: TikTok
Leveraging Influencers to Promote the Brand
On TikTok, Maxx Chewning collaborates with influencers, giving them free Sour Strips sour candy, and uses their influence to further expand the brand's awareness in various circles, thereby establishing a closer connection between the brand and consumers.
Because Sour Strips sour candy is low in calories and fat, it has also become the first choice for some TikTok fitness influencers to quickly replenish energy before workouts. With the help of promotional videos from this group, the Sour Strips brand has attracted more fitness enthusiasts' attention and love on TikTok.
Image source: TikTok
Using TikTok Hashtag Popularity to Feed Back Into the Brand
The Sour Strips topic community is also growing continuously. Many sour candy lovers share their candy experiences and exchange various unique ways of eating under the hashtag.
Currently, the #sourstrips hashtag has reached hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, making it one of the most popular topics on the platform.
Image source: TikTok
Building Its Own Overseas Independent Website
To further expand into overseas markets, Sour Strips has also carefully built an overseas independent website.
The color scheme is bold and flashy, perfectly blending with the product packaging style to form a unique brand style. The independent website's page design is dynamic, with bright and lively color combinations making the entire site look both trendy and fun, directly bringing a strong visual impact to users and making the brand memorable during browsing.
Sour Strips overseas independent website
Currently, Sour Strips offers a wide variety of sour candy flavors for consumers to choose from, including apple, mango, watermelon, blueberry, and more—a total of 12 flavors. To meet the needs of first-time buyers, Sour Strips has also launched a $22.99 starter pack containing 7 different flavors, further stimulating new users' enthusiasm to buy.
Sour Strips: Infinite Possibilities for the Future
Looking back on Sour Strips' overseas development journey, by effectively utilizing TikTok as a social media platform, Sour Strips has rapidly enhanced its brand influence overseas and secured a place in consumers' minds.
In its first year, it achieved the impressive results of selling 1 million bags and earning $3 million in revenue. Without any external investment, it created over $40 million in sales in the following four years. This series of achievements fully demonstrates Sour Strips' strong market potential and broad development prospects to the public.
In the future, we look forward to more brands learning from Sour Strips' successful experience, achieving rapid development and rise, and winning the love and recognition of overseas consumers.
