D2C Diaries
Join Olly Hudson and Loukas Hambi in a laid-back yet insightful podcast, where we dive into the heart of D2C and e-commerce. With a combined experience of managing over £150 million in ad spend across Meta and TikTok and helping scale over 200 brands, we bring you a digestible blend of performance, operational, and creative wisdom.
D2C Diaries
How Ellie Carlile Turned 30M TikTok Views into a 7-Figure Beauty Brand
How do you handle it when your kitchen-table beauty brand suddenly pulls in £60K before lunch — and you’re still counting stock by hand?
In this episode of D2C Diaries, we sit down with Ellie Carlile, the unstoppable founder behind By Ellie, the brand born from a personal skin struggle, a £2,000 investment, and a makeshift label operation in her mum’s garage.
Ellie shares the raw, real journey of building a beauty brand that now sells every 10 minutes, is stocked in Sephora, and runs multi-market TikTok Shop operations across the UK and EU.
We unpack:
- How she turned product reviews into a content engine
- The 30M-view TikTok that changed everything
- Why staying founder-led was the secret to community-led growth
- The chaos (and learnings) behind overselling thousands of units in one hour
- The frameworks she uses to scale with focus, from TED values to product simplicity
This is one for any founder navigating content overwhelm, platform changes, and the pressure to scale while staying true to their brand.
00:00 Starting the business
03:57 First launch mistakes
06:18 Growth strategy
08:40 Why raw content wins
11:20 Bottlenecks in the business
12:30 Handling virality
14:45 Entering paid media
17:37 Building a brand beyond the founder
22:20 The reality of scaling a team
24:50 Core values in the team
27:05 Staying focused while scaling
28:10 Landing Sephora
32:50 TikTok Shop strategy
37:40 The US Tariff crisis
40:40 Being transparent with customers
42:45 Working with TikTok affiliates
47:40 Growing as a founder
Follow Ellie:
https://www.instagram.com/elliecarlile_/
https://www.tiktok.com/@ellie.n.c
Follow By Ellie Beauty
https://www.instagram.com/byelliebeauty/
https://www.tiktok.com/@byelliebeauty
Follow Olly on socials:
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/kPrqO
Twitter: https://x.com/oliverwhudson
Follow Loukas on socials:
LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/TRI8B
Twitter: https://x.com/LoukasHambi
Follow D2C Diaries on socials
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@d2c.diaries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d2c_diaries/
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