The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

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Some companies look like they’ve figured it out almost immediately.

The launch goes well.
The product spreads quickly.
Users show up faster than expected.

For a moment, it feels like momentum will carry everything forward.

And then it doesn’t.

Growth slows. Engagement softens. What looked like a breakout starts to level off.

This pattern is more common than you’d expect.

Because early traction and sustained growth are driven by distinctly different things.

This is a look into what those things are. 

At the beginning, growth is usually driven by discovery.

A strong launch.
A viral moment.
A favorable market window.

Clubhouse is a clear example. The audio-focused “meeting room” app scaled rapidly in 2021, reaching millions of users during a Covid-distorted period when live, social audio felt new and the world was largely at home. But as behavior shifted and competitors launched similar features, engagement declined.

The early traction was real.

But it was tied to a moment more than a lasting habit.

You see a similar pattern in consumer products.

Brands like Halo Top, the ice cream maker, saw explosive early growth by tapping into a clear consumer desire—low-calorie ice cream that didn’t feel like a compromise. At one point, it became one of the top-selling ice cream brands in the U.S.

But as competitors entered and novelty faded, growth slowed. The initial spike was driven by differentiation and timing. Sustaining it required deeper brand and product defensibility.

Once the initial wave passes, a different question takes over:

Do people come back?

Retention is what separates traction from growth.

Across product benchmarks from firms like Mixpanel and Amplitude, a consistent pattern shows up: a significant percentage of new users drop off within the first 30–90 days. In many consumer apps, the majority never form a lasting habit.

The same applies in physical products.

Trial is relatively easy to generate. Repeat purchase is harder.

When early customers don’t convert into repeat behavior, growth becomes dependent on continuously replacing them. That’s where costs rise, momentum fades and growth becomes unsustainable.

Another common pattern is when early traction is driven more by distribution than by true resonance.

A product gets amplified:

But amplification isn’t the same as understanding.

Many DTC brands from the late 2010s scaled quickly on paid social, only to see growth stall as customer acquisition costs increased. Without strong differentiation or a clear reason to return, the economics broke down.

The channel worked.

But the brand didn’t carry enough weight on its own.

Early on, novelty does a lot of work.

It answers the question: What is this?

But novelty fades quickly.

Once it does, the question changes:

Why should I keep choosing this?

That’s where many brands get exposed.

If the answer isn’t clear—whether it’s better utility, stronger identity, or stickier habit—growth slows.

If you’re seeing strong early traction, the most important question is whether it’s durable.

A few ways to assess that:

If retention is weak, growth will eventually stall.

This tells you whether the product is being pulled or pushed.

If not, your positioning may not be sticking.

Habit is what sustains growth.

Early traction is a signal.

It tells you something is working.

But it doesn’t tell you what will last.

The brands that sustain growth are the ones that convert that early attention into something more durable:

Repeat behavior.
Clear differentiation.
Ongoing relevance.

Because growth doesn’t come from the initial spike.

It comes from what holds afterwards.

Best,

Edwin