Vacation made sunscreen worth remembering

The perfume was supposed to be a small joke. Before Vacation launched its first sunscreen-scented fragrance, the founders reduced production to 500 bottles. Perhaps nobody wanted to smell like sunscreen. If the experiment flopped, three reasonably sociable founders could surely give away the inventory. Then the bottles sold out in a few hours.

That was an awkwardly useful discovery. The founders had designed a limited edition; customers had discovered a repeatable desire. By 2024, co-founder Lach Hall was describing a supply chain that had spent more than two years catching up, eventually requiring new custom packaging. The first thing to give way was their estimate of what people would want.

01 First, build a place people want to visit

Vacation’s story begins before the bottle. In 2017, advertising colleagues Hall and Dakota Green were working remotely in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Sunscreen seemed strangely disconnected from its setting. Here was a product used beside swimming pools and beaches, presented with the solemnity of an obligation. They wondered whether the experience could feel more like the afternoon surrounding it.

The third founder, Marty Bell, brought a particularly useful piece of scenery. His internet radio project, Poolside FM, later called Poolsuite, had been playing summery music since 2014. It already offered an imaginary holiday to people at their computers. Sunscreen gave that audience something physical that belonged in the same world. Vacation opened for business in 2021.

Its launch campaign let visitors claim honorary company jobs. You could become a hammock inspector, receive a digital business card, and join the performance. More than 12,000 people supplied phone numbers. The joke created a direct relationship the company could return to. Participation came before the sales pitch; the customer had already acquired a role.

The relationship also needed something to do between purchases. Vacation’s newsletters made room for poolside etiquette and peculiar internet finds, including a banana museum and a parrot-training course. In 2024, Hall told Digiday the team sent a content-focused edition at least once a fortnight. That gives the customer a reason to open a message even when the sunscreen bottle is still full.

02 A swimming pool, translated into perfume

The scent makes the positioning unusually literal. Vacation worked with ARQUISTE’s Carlos Huber and perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux on a fragrance whose vocabulary includes coconut, banana, pool water, pool toy and swimsuit Lycra. The last three details do the interesting work. A generic tropical smell suggests a destination. A plastic pool toy suggests that you have been there.

Classic Lotion supplied the initial introduction. The eau de toilette carried the idea into another category, where a person could buy the association without buying sun protection. Hall later told Glossy that the fragrance began essentially as marketing for the lotion. Customer demand changed its job. At Ulta, the perfume is displayed alongside the SPF, keeping the connection visible.

This is a premium consumer business with two complementary routes to the shopper: direct online sales and retail distribution. Its audience includes beachgoers, beauty shoppers and people who enjoy owning an object with a point of view. Alternatives range from Sun Bum and Hawaiian Tropic to Supergoop! Vacation competes through an identifiable experience, rather than asking every shopper to compare a list of ingredients.

Those two sales routes test different parts of the idea. The website can surround a bottle with music, stories and imaginary employees. On a retail shelf, the packaging has to carry more of that conversation alone. A shopper should be able to recognize the proposition without taking a guided tour of the website. That is why the consistency matters commercially: the can, the fragrance and the typography keep making introductions when the founders are absent. The sale still depends on someone wanting to use what is inside.

03 The advertisement comes out of the can

Classic Whip pushed that method into the gesture of application. Launched in 2022, it dispenses sunscreen in a shape resembling whipped cream. The idea followed a video of pancake batter in an aerosol can. Making it work involved packaging specialist Clayton Corporation, the company behind the original Reddi-wip, along with formulation expertise and dermatologist Elizabeth Hale.

A conventional sunscreen needs someone to explain why it deserves attention. Classic Whip produces a little spectacle when someone presses the nozzle. That makes a demonstration easy to film and easy to understand. The transferable idea is to put a reason to share inside the product’s use. Borrowing an old typeface would accomplish considerably less.

“Our hypothesis was that sunscreen didn’t have to be a chore.”Lach Hall · BeautyMatter, 2024

04 Eleven people, one orange tube

Orange Gelée supplied another kind of participation. After the original Bain de Soleil product disappeared in 2019, Vacation assembled eleven fans and skincare experts to help develop a reinterpretation. They weighed in on scent, texture, ingredients, packaging and SPF. The resulting SPF 30 gel launched on March 28, 2024, in an aluminum tube.

The panel wanted the familiar orange appearance and sheen, but less grease. The exercise separated what people remembered fondly from what could be improved. This was product research conducted around an existing attachment. Vacation says it has no affiliation with Bayer or the Bain de Soleil trademark. It was offering a new formulation with a familiar emotional reference.

05 The bill comes due in real life

The fantasy required capital. A $6 million Series A was announced in 2023. In March 2026, VMG Partners took a minority stake; Beauty Independent reported a $70 million transaction, primarily secondary proceeds. Money paid to existing holders should not be mistaken for the same amount added to the product-development budget.

There are also boundaries to playful design. In August 2025, the FDA warned Vacation that Classic Whip SPF 30 and Classic Whip Glow SPF 30 were unapproved new drugs because their foam form fell outside the applicable sunscreen monograph conditions. The agency also raised accidental-ingestion concerns about the food-like presentation. The very feature that made the products memorable carried a regulatory complication.

Vacation appointed Nelson Miranda CEO in August 2026, while the founders remained involved. The appointment adds operating experience to a company whose creative proposition is already clear. Its approach depends on shoppers enjoying the scent, understanding the joke and returning for the product. For someone who wants an unobtrusive, fragrance-free routine, the central attraction may be irrelevant. A holiday is personal. So is the bottle you bring home.