It took Garrett Waggoner about three weeks to realize the constant new traffic to his company's website was not going to slow down anytime soon.
In March, his team began seeing double and triple the amount of visitors on the site, most coming from an unlikely source: TikTok.
"You would see concurrent site visitors doubled and tripled and say, 'Huh, there are this many people on our site,' and then you look back to see there was a TikTok video that resonated with the audience," Waggoner said. "Something would go out for a week and then it was like, 'Oh my gosh, will it keep going?' And it certainly has."
Waggoner is the founder and CEO of Cirkul, an innovative water bottle company that has found a niche among TikTok users, many who are in the younger Gen Z generation. The social media appallows users to create short-form videos and is known for its ability to make anything take off overnight.
But with Cirkul, there wasn't a singular video that went viral — the "Cirkul water bottle" hashtag brings up thousands of videos that cumulatively have more than 31.1 million views.
"A lot of the people that posted it weren’t your typical influencer; their reaction was genuine and it really resonates with this demographic," Waggoner said. "People called it to the 'TikTok water bottle,' which was great to see. But as much as this was a point of time of virality, it's just continued. It's not a flash in the pan, it's an ongoing snowball."
"Going viral" is not a new concept, but there's no guidebook for companies on what to do when it happens. For Waggoner, his focus was the customer, he said, which meant creating a third shift in roughly 24 hours to help with order fulfillment. The company also switched from shipping the product from overseas by plane versus by boat, which is a quicker but costlier tactic.
"It's been a bit of a whirlwind. Everyone says it's a good problem to have — I don't like problems — but it's been a lot of hard work and overcoming adversity," Waggoner said, adding the company jumped 27 months from where it expected to be. "With the 300% quarterly growth, you can't plan for it. But, it's about being thoughtful and thinking at the end of the day, 'How do we get these out?' Because that's what the customer is waiting on."
The company hired 100 people in the last three months, plus an additional dozen customer service representatives. The vast majority are local Tampa Bay residents, and he plans to hire roughly 100 more by the end of the year. The company is also expanding their space, adding in a 70,000 sq. ft. warehouse that will triple their current size.
Waggoner believes the virality comes in part from the product's wide-reaching use: It could resonate for a mother who wants their child to drink more water, or for an athlete who's looking to up their electrolytes. But while the TikTok videos introduced the product to a new group of potential customers, Cirkul had already found its footing — in November 2020, the company announced it closed a $6.6 million Series A round.
"To an extent, it certainly surprised me it's resonating so well, but for our team, it's a product that makes sense for a lot of different folks," he said. "At the end of the day, it's more water, less sugar, less plastic ... it's a lot of different messages that resonate with the cultural mindset we’re in."
