Rhode | Suplex's Verdict ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Suplex’s Website Audit for Rhode at a Glance 📊

Rhode launched in June 2022 with three products that sold out in three days, reached USD 212 million in revenue in the 12 months ending March 2025 while doubling its customer base year-on-year, became the number one skincare brand in Earned Media Value in 2024 with 367% growth, and was acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in May 2025 for up to USD 1 billion, all without a single retail store, on fewer than 15 SKUs, and almost no traditional advertising. 

Suplex Design analysed the website across brand identity, drop mechanics, PDP architecture, catalogue surfacing, and trust mechanics, and what follows is a breakdown of how Rhode built one of the most disciplined D2C storefronts in beauty, and the two things that are still holding it back.

What Rhode's Website Gets Exceptionally Right ✅

1. The Launch Hero Treats Beauty Like a Supreme Drop 📦

The current homepage hero is an out-of-focus shot of products on a wooden shelf. One line of copy reads "Introducing the summer '26 collection." and the single CTA reads "JUNE 9TH AT 9AM PT." The entire hero is a tease and a countdown.

Rhode is doing with beauty what Supreme built its entire culture on, announce the date, blur the product, make the customer come back at the exact moment.

For a brand whose entire conversion advantage is the cultural pull of its founder, this is exactly the right way to use the homepage. The visitor who lands today is not being invited to shop. They are being told when to return.

That scarcity mechanic is doing brand-building work that no amount of homepage copy could replicate, and it costs Rhode nothing except the discipline to not show the product early.

2. A Tight Catalogue Where Every Product Gets the Full Stage 📸

Rhode carries fewer than 15 products across lip, skin, and body care. And their website does not try to hide that thinness but instead itleans into it. 

Every product gets its own editorial moment with large images, scrolling video, ingredient close-ups, swatched lip dots, and enough space to breathe.

The e.l.f. CEO called it out specifically when announcing the acquisition: "In less than three years, they've gone from zero to $212 million in net sales, direct-to-consumer only, with only 10 products. I didn't think that was possible."

For a category where SKU count is usually the primary conversion lever, Rhode has gone the opposite direction and won. When a catalogue is this small, the right response is to make every product feel unmissable. Rhode does exactly that.

3. The PDP Is the Most Immersive in Its Category 🎥

The Rhode product pages carry a blend of large hero photography, short-form scrolling video, and ingredient close-ups that is genuinely unusual in D2C beauty.

The information layer is precisely very informative enough for the curious buyer, short enough for the buyer who already knows they want it.

The Peptide Lip Tint PDP carries a horizontal row of twelve-plus shade dots rendered as the actual tint colours rather than packshot thumbnails.

The customer can see every available shade without leaving the PDP and can switch between them in one tap, which is the single most important mechanic for a lip colour product where the buying anxiety is always "will this colour suit me."

At the bottom of every PDP sits a three-icon row labelled prep, cleanse, seal.

The taxonomy turns a one-product purchase into a regimen the customer can build on visit by visit, the same architecture The Ordinary uses to expand its basket. For a young brand still building catalogue depth, the system itself is the upsell.

4. The Brand Voice Is the Most Consistent in Celebrity Beauty 🗣️

Rhode writes the way the brand thinks, like it is minimal, direct, and entirely without the clinical authority voice that most beauty brands default to when they want to sound credible.

"Glaze your skin with goodness." "One of everything really good." These are not taglines the brand deploys occasionally. They are applied consistently from the homepage to the PDP to the ingredient descriptions.

Most celebrity beauty brands have a founder and a brand voice that point in different directions where the founder is aspirational and the copy is clinical.

Rhode has resolved that tension entirely and made the copy sounds like Hailey Bieber. And we at Suplex Design believe that alignment between founder identity and written voice is rarer in beauty than it should be, and it is a large part of why the brand earned USD 212 million without traditional advertising.

Where the Experience Falls Short ⚠️

1. No Customer Photos on Any PDP at a Premium Price Point ⭐

While the Rhode PDPs carry 4-5 star ratings along with written reviews, there are however no customer photography.

For products priced between USD 16 and USD 30, this is a real conversion gap. The brand is banking almost entirely on Hailey Bieber's cultural equity to close the purchase, which works for the existing fanbase who arrived already convinced.

It does not work for the first-time visitor who is comparison shopping against Glossier, Rare Beauty, or Summer Fridays, all of which built significant conversion credibility through aggressive review systems.

Rhode has more earned media value than any other skincare brand in 2024. The social proof infrastructure on the site does not yet reflect that. The brand that is the most talked-about skincare label in the world should have the most visible customer evidence of that fact on every product page.

2. The Homepage Shows Three Products Out of a Fifteen-SKU Catalogue 📂

The homepage names exactly three product categories: highlight, bronze, tint. The rest of the scroll is editorial imagery, brand mission copy, and white space.

A first-time visitor who came to buy something has to either click into the SHOP navigation, which behaves as an off-canvas drawer, or wait for the summer'26 drop.

The drop hero is the right choice for the brand's cultural strategy. What sits beneath it is not enough. For a visitor who arrives between drops, the homepage is currently doing brand storytelling at the expense of product discovery.

A bestseller strip or a "Shop the System" row beneath the hero would let both exist simultaneously without compromising either.

What Suplex Would Fix First 💡

Priority 1 - Build a Full Review Stack Into Every PDP ⭐

Star ratings, written reviews, verified-purchase labels, and customer photography belong on every Rhode product page. The drop culture and the founder equity have already done the brand-building work. Reviews along with genuine and real customer photos close the loop for the comparison shopper who is looking for one more reason to commit at USD 28.

Priority 2 - Surface the Catalogue Beneath the Launch Teaser 📂

The summer '26 drop teaser stays exactly as it is. Beneath it, a bestseller strip of four to six products with add-to-cart gives the visitor who arrived between drops somewhere to go. The brand polish & cultural strategy is intact. And the first-time visitor finally has more than three product names to act on.

Final Scorecard 🏆 

Suplex Verdict 📝

Rhode built USD 212 million in revenue with fewer than 15 products and almost no traditional advertising. That is the most commercially efficient brand story in beauty right now.

The website reflects that discipline almost perfectly with a drop mechanic that treats beauty like streetwear, PDPs that give each product the full stage it deserves, and a brand voice that sounds like the founder because it was written to.

Two things break the spell. A PDP with no customer photos on the reviews is asking the comparison shopper to trust the brand equity alone. And a homepage that names three products out of a fifteen-SKU catalogue is hiding the store from the customer who came to shop.

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 / 5. Two fixes from a 5.

Suplex Design works with D2C beauty, skincare, and lifestyle brands across the UAE, India, and the US on PDP architecture, drop mechanics, and conversion-focused UX. If your brand is at a similar stage to Rhode and you want an honest assessment of what is holding your site back, get in touch with our team of experts at Suplex Design.