How rhodin. went viral overnight (again!) worn by one of the biggest influencers ( Sascha Fitness) in the The Americas

How rhodin. went viral overnight (again!) worn by one of the biggest influencers ( Sascha Fitness)  in the The Americas
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Overnight success is definitely a myth - when you read these stories of brands going viral, there is so much more to the story than just pure luck. Years of hard work, the daily grind and hustle, promoting your brand on every channel available to you that makes sense....the list goes on. It's tiring, emotional, stressful and so rewarding all at the same time. An overnight success can sometimes be 10 years in the making.

rhodin. has been lucky to have had several viral moments over the last few years and none of these even came close to what happened on Jan 12th.

I woke up to a beautiful post on Jan 12th by one of my favourite faces on instagram  - Sascha Barboza - or Sascha Fitness as her fans like to reference. Sascha hails from Venezuela and currently resides in Miami Florida with her beautiful family. She is also one of the most loved fitness entrepreneurs in The Americas & Worldwide with over 8 million social media fans.

Sascha is a big fan of rhodin. since purchasing a few pairs of our shades and wearing them on different occasions - the school run, to her children's sports and whilst on holidays.

This recent post was on her way to her daughter's volleyball game and she wore a pair of our RC Agent Topaz shades. What I didn't know was the huge interest this particular design had from Sascha's community. Happily answering questions on where the sunglasses were from and why she liked the brand - for her community's ease - Sascha kindly tagged the Agent Topaz on her Instagram story and things suddenly accelerated.


I was making my morning coffee when it began.....the sounds of cher ching, cher ching - the shopify sound when you make a sale. I checked my phone, dropped my coffee and ran to our studio to check the inventory. Only 10 pairs left in stock........problem? Not really.

I was able to contact my manufacturer very quickly ( what's app) is a miracle worker at times and ordered another 300 pairs. With the stock locked in I updated the site with a " PRE ORDER" status - meaning customers could pay and secure their pair of Agent Topaz and then just had to wait for us to ship out the orders ( once the stock arrived).

Going Viral is not for the faint hearted - we had orders dropping in every few minutes. For every hour the tagged post was on Instagram Stories - the further our opportunity went. 

Our final visitor count was just over 50k in 24 hours with several of our designs selling out. January has been the biggest month on record for rhodin. since we began in 2018. It also meant that we finally had some more cashflow for our little business after 2024 being absolutely atrocious. This year is about growing even more globally and we are off to a great start.

As a Founder I live for these unplanned Viral moments where the person who tags your design does it purely because they love your design. It was not pre planned, paid or in anyway promoted. Unplanned moments are amazing, stressful and so rewarding....you just need some practice at it and how to organise the flow of events that follow.

Being a small family business we fulfill all orders in our studio warehouse, write each thank you note and answer every customer question in all languages they arrive in. With Sascha's community being largely Spanish speaking - Google Translate has become our newest best friend.

A major lesson we did learn and to work on for next time...the ability to drive increased conversion. With the visitor profile being largely from the Americas and with such shopping intensity - the funnel fills very quickly and does get blocked.

These blockages include - failing payment gateways, shipping costs, check out ease and simple translation issues with an international audience. With shopify we did try to alleviate most of these from last time - however shipping cost is our largest issue. We do offer free shipping over a min amount ($100 AUD in Australia and $200 AUD  Internationally)  which does move our conversion needle.  

Having customers join our VIP EDM program and offering a discount (15% off) when they join - also helps (they can use the discount to bring down the cost of shipping or the item itself).

However the cost of postage Internationally is a conversion killer and when a simple International parcel with Australia Post ( on band 5) is $20 AUD ++  - it does become an issue. We are not sure how to solve this right now - but are working on it for the future.

If you would like to know more about Sascha - you can take a look here @saschafitness

Alex xxx

My Instagram profile here - Alex Nieuwenhuys

To reconfirm this is not sponsored, paid or a gifted post. It was organic and simply shared by a lovely friend who enjoys our designs.