The Peppermayo Era Has Begun (HBBIP #90)

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Sometimes you can only ignore the signs for so long. Sure, other brands come onto your radar now and then, with their ‘name recognition’ and ‘products that are relevant to your needs and interests,’ so you write about them, and that’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, numbers are numbers. And some brands have numbers that you just can’t argue with.

All this isn’t to say that I haven’t been putting off writing about Peppermayo. Far from it! I’ve been intrigued ever since I first heard of the brand earlier this year, when it posted off-the-chart growth metrics in our Brands of the Year Report. Because I am rarely in the market for women’s clothing (though I’m never out of the market if any brands out there want to send me gifts), I assumed that Peppermayo was some kind of sandwich franchise, which was exciting, because I am often in the market for sandwiches, be they gifts or otherwise.

So imagine my surprise—or, if you too don’t know, relive my surprise—when I found that Peppermayo is not, in fact, a condiment, but rather an Australian digital boutique for all things women’s fashion. This was secondary only to my surprise over just how well the brand is doing.

What’s fueling Peppermayo’s success? Where did that name come from? And where can hungry newsletter writer get a sandwich, anyway? Find the answers to these questions, and so much more, right here right now.

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Peppermayo

First things first: promises kept. In what’s either the simplest or most complex of the questions I laid out, I asked Google about the whole name thing, and this is what AI told me:

Google search

So there you have it: the supercomputer says that ‘pepper’ and ‘mayo’ resonate with the brand’s audience of vibrantly colorful Australian consumers. I can see why this thing is coming for my job! Maybe mayonnaise with pepper flakes is the pinnacle of Australian cuisine? These people do put pineapple on their burgers, after all.

Anyway, I think I’ve about hit the limit on the humor that can be spun out of this company’s name, so I might as well get to the data now. And what impressive data it is!

Typically, the brands that I analyze in HBBIP present a steady growth pattern, though we’ve been seeing more and more variation to that formula as of late. With Peppermayo, we have an unconventional but highly consistent pattern across all of its key metrics.

(Note that while Peppermayo is from Down Under, we’re using U.S. data here to show how effectively the brand has broken into the market, uh, Up Above.)

Let’s start with impressions, as it was the metric where this dynamic was displayed most starkly:

Peppermayo Impressions: 2020 - 2024

Apart from a blip in 2022, Peppermayo was kind of just chugging along, posting roughly 20M-40M impressions per year (it may not look like it on the graph, but there was a fair amount of variation). In 2024, Peppermayo popped off to 649.7M impressions—a cool 3,287% increase from 2020. But of course, that’s what happens when you see similar growth for your creator count:

Peppermayo Creator Count: 2020 - 2024

Again, get used to that pattern, folks. You’re gonna be seeing variations on it across all these metrics. With creator count, Peppermayo more than 10x’d its total from 2020 to 2024—not quite its impressive impressions improvement, but nonetheless noteworthy. 

Anytime I see a brand drastically increase its impressions without a crazy creator count expansion, my mind immediately goes toward TikTok. So that’s something to flag for later.

How about a 1,527% increase in post count? We’ve got that, too:

Peppermayo Post Count: 2020 - 2024

Finally, we saw a similarly dramatic improvement across the brand’s engagements (a 2,334% increase):

Peppermayo Engagements: 2020 - 2024

Or how about a 1,936% surge in the brand’s Earned Media Value (EMV)?

Peppermayo EMV: 2020 - 2024

I believe that this successfully establishes the brand’s growth bonafides. Having done that, let’s zoom in on Peppermayo’s performance over the last 12 months to identify what’s really driving that momentum.

I mentioned TikTok above—how does that theory bear out?

EMV Breakdown

Well, Instagram still accounts for a majority of Peppermayo’s EMV, and by a pretty wide margin. Combined, these two channels comprise over 99% of the brand’s total. But dig a little deeper and you’ll see how the momentum is shifting: from June 2024 to May 2025, Peppermayo saw a 452% YoY increase in its Instagram EMV, which is a pretty bad proofpoint for illustrating the weakness of a particular social channel.

But then you have to consider that during the same time period, its TikTok EMV grew by 1,083%. Hmm.

Plus, when it comes to impressions—the metric where Peppermayo has seen the greatest growth over the past five years—the two platforms were nearly even:

Impressions Breakdown

As you’d expect from a brand that’s seen such a vast community expansion, most of Peppermayo’s population is relatively new to the brand. From June 2024 to May 2025, Peppermayo accrued $138.1M EMV. Of that total, $96.9M EMV (70%) came from creators who hadn’t posted about the brand during the preceding 12 months. Meanwhile, tenured Peppermayo fans increased their contributions from $16M EMV between June 2023 and May 2024 to $41.2M EMV between June 2024 and May 2025.

But what really shocked me was just how few creators Peppermayo has lost. The total EMV for creators who posted about the brand between June 2023 and May 2024, then stopped mentioning it?

$4.2M EMV. That’s it.

It’s not unheard of for brands to see $4.2M EMV dropped from a single creator who stops posting. For Peppermayo to only surrender that much, while adding so many new fans, shows me that they might have cracked the code: once you start posting about Peppermayo, you don’t stop. Over a long enough timescale, that caliber of creator retention is what builds winning brands.

Because the passion is there. From outfit hauls to Coachella content, from Peppermayo parties in Nashville to casual nights out, what stands out about Peppermayo content is how much creators clearly like the brand. It suits their needs, keeps them feeling cute, and remains a versatile, affordable option in a crowded field.

After all, that growth didn’t just stop in 2024. The brand has leveled up in 2025 so far, further confirming that the Peppermayo Era is upon us:

Peppermayo EMV: June 2024 - May 2025

So who cares if the name is confusing? Once you hear it, you remember it. And I have a feeling that even more people are going to be hearing it real soon.

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