N.B. company finds viral success through satisfying lip balm videos

A family-owned business in Moncton says it’s blown away by its viral success on social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

Sylvie Roy and Mario LeBlanc run Eclair Lips, where they sell lip balms, scrubs and colourful lip balm holders that can clip onto a purse or backpack.

The business officially launched in 2015, but Roy said she’s long had an interest in lip balm.

She originally started making balms in her kitchen, giving them out to her friends and family when she made too many for herself.

“It’s like making muffins,” Roy said. “You can’t just make one, you have to make a bunch of them.”

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In 2022, she and LeBlanc began making short videos for TikTok, showing how the lip balms were made. She later began posting YouTube shorts, where the videos took off almost immediately.

“Within a month, I had 100,000 subscribers just from sharing these shorts,” she said. “It was mind-blowing. It was very overwhelming, but it was really cool.”

Currently, Eclair Lips has almost 240,000 YouTube subscribers and 146,000 TikTok followers, where its satisfying videos have received more than nine million views.

More than four million of those views were from a video showing Roy scraping off excess balm with a scraper that’s just a bit too big.

The company also posts videos to Instagram and Facebook.

Roy isn’t sure why people like watching them, but she has some ideas.

“I think I really give people a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happens in a small business,” she said.

“And I think it’s something that a lot of people are curious about…. I will tackle any question that I get, and I think people find that really interesting.”

She’s also been told that she has a soothing voice.

“I think my kids would disagree with that, but a lot of people like hearing the voiceovers,” Roy said.

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Speaking of kids, Roy said hers — aged 10 and 12 — didn’t understand much about their parents’ viral success until they received their plaque for getting 100,000 YouTube subscribers in 2022.

“It doesn’t always hit them,” she said. “They don’t think I’m way cooler because of it.”

LeBlanc, Roy’s husband, works with her full-time labelling the lip balms and helping out in all other aspects of production.

He said the company has more than doubled its sales as a result of its social media success, which has helped it break into the U.S. market.

He described the experience as “surreal.”

“You always think it’s going to happen to someone else,” he said. “Going viral is like winning the lottery, so it was unexpected but it felt cool, you know?”