A Brazilian-beach-inspired body cream that Sephora almost passed on — it became Sephora's best-selling skincare product and reportedly sells one jar every six seconds.
Bum Bum Cream is a coconut-and-cupuaçu-scented firming body cream from Sol de Janeiro, a beauty brand built around Rio de Janeiro beach culture. It's a genuinely rare case of a body-care product (not face skincare, not makeup) becoming one of the biggest hits in all of prestige beauty retail.
According to brand founder accounts, Sephora buyers initially questioned the cream's distinctive gourmand scent before agreeing to stock it — then sales data settled the argument: Bum Bum Cream became Sephora's best-selling skincare product within months and held that position for years.
L'Occitane bought its majority stake in 2021 when Sol de Janeiro was doing roughly $60 million a year in revenue. By fiscal year 2024, net sales had grown to €686 million — a 157% year-over-year jump — one of the sharper growth curves of any beauty acquisition in recent memory.
Founder Heela Yang has described the brand's core idea as selling a feeling rather than a specific skincare benefit — inspired by watching the unselfconscious body confidence of women on Ipanema Beach in Rio. That positioning is a deliberate departure from the ingredient-and-clinical-results marketing that dominates most of the rest of the body care aisle.
The formula itself isn't a novel actives breakthrough — it's a fairly standard firming/moisturizing body cream — which reinforces that scent and brand feeling, not a unique active ingredient, are what's actually driving repeat purchases here.