CharCharms

Key numbers

The product

CharCharms' hero product is a stick-on hook for the side of a water bottle that holds hair ties, keys, ID cards and charms - a trivially simple fix for a problem every gym-goer knows. The line expanded into decorative charm bundles, light-up straw toppers ($9.99), bottle boots that protect the base, pouches for phones and wallets, bag charms and wall hooks, with retail packs at $11.99-$14.99 and wholesale prices around $5 against a $1-2 production cost. The positioning turned the water bottle from a durable good into a fashion accessory that customers redecorate weekly, riding TikTok trends like #StanleyTumbler which has hundreds of millions of views. Products are sold through charcharms.com, Target nationwide (17 sets in stores since September 2024) and all 780 Dick's Sporting Goods locations. Competitors sell generic charms, but CharCharms leads the category it effectively created, with seasonal drops like any fast-fashion brand.

How they did it

Charlotte Trecartin was a business student at the University of Illinois and a part-time spin instructor when, during 2020 Covid lockdowns, she noticed her water bottle kept getting scratched and had nowhere to put her small stuff. She made a prototype stick-on hook, 3D-printed early versions, and classmates started using them to hang card holders and decorations, revealing a personalization market beyond the utility use case. She registered the trademark in September 2021 with money earned from part-time jobs and packed every order herself in her basement. Sales were just $80,000 in 2022 until a Chicago business incubator took her on and helped her run TikTok; she invested $400 a month in a TikTok coach and posted three times a day, growing the account and catching retailers' attention. Revenue jumped to $200,000 in 2023, then exploded to about $6.5 million in 2024 after Dick's Sporting Goods ordered for all 780 stores and Target went nationwide. Her January 31, 2025 Shark Tank appearance drew offers from Kevin O'Leary and Daymond John, but she walked away rather than give up more than 15% of her company - and still hit over $10 million in revenue in 2025, a Forbes 30 Under 30 list spot, and a 9,000-square-meter warehouse.

Why it worked

• Rode a real cultural wave - tumbler personalization - with a product costing $1-2 to make that sells for $10+
• Mastered TikTok as a channel early, treating content as the storefront and posting multiple times daily
• Retrofitted an existing product everyone already owns (the bottle) rather than asking customers to buy new hardware
• Retained ownership: walked away from a Shark Tank deal to keep control, then scaled to national retail anyway