Little Moons Ice Cream Brings Millions Thanks to TikTok Videos Going Viral

There are many stories in the business world when success depends on correctly chosen business models and well thought-out plans. However, unplanned successes also happen: a British Japanese ice cream company turned into a million-dollar business thanks to a tiktok video that went viral.

The parents of the founders of the company came to study in Britain from Malaysia in the 1960s. They started a mail order clothing company and then an exotic fish import business. And only then they went into the business that they liked: they opened a bakery selling cakes and cookies traditional for Southeast Asia.

Vivienne Wong and her brother Howard from childhood helped their parents in their family business, and only then decided to start their own business. Before that, they spent two years in their parents' bakery perfecting the recipe for the traditional Japanese mochi cake in order to use it in the manufacture of unusual ice cream.

Ice cream in rice dough

Mochi is a soft and sweet rice dough, a variety of traditional Japanese sweets. Typically in Asian countries, a variety of sweet fillings are used as filler. However, there is also a technology in which small balls of ice cream are wrapped in rice dough and get a mochi ice cream, which the siblings decided to sell under the Little Moons brand.

According to the businessmen, the hardest part was adapting the traditional recipe that was used in the parents' bakery, so that the dough was thin, elastic and melted in the mouth along with the ice cream.

COVID-19 pandemic has forced to rethink business

Founded in 2010, the business of making ice cream unusual for the European market developed gradually, but the brothers and sisters did not have enough special stars from the sky. They worked in their own factory and in February 2020, a month before the start of the pandemic, they made the largest profits at the time.

Howard and Vivien Wong / Photo by Financial Times

However, already in March last year, they stopped most of the production due to the introduction of restrictions. Indeed, by that time, their business was focused on restaurants, where they supplied about 50% of the products. The factory was partially opened only in April, because fortunately, orders from supermarkets grew rapidly and more than compensated for the loss of restaurant sales.

Over the past 12 months, entrepreneurs have spent almost $ 140,000 on personal protective equipment for staff, disinfectants for equipment and hired eight additional employees who are exclusively involved in hygiene measures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unexpected fame after 10 years of work

In January 2021, after a year of uncertainty and anxiety, a video was posted on Tiktok in which the girl went to a large Tesco store in search of Little Moons ice cream. Grocery shopping was one of the few activities allowed during lockdowns and quarantines.

This video attracted attention because it gave teenagers the opportunity to do something interesting, in a monotonous quarantine world. It has inspired many others to go shopping to find Little Moons, share videos and buy real tiktok followers of their tastes and preferences in the Japanese sweet dessert line. In a few days, there were more than 10 thousand such videos on the TikTok network, and the Little Moons brand went viral on TikTok. At last count, the hashtag #littlemoons had 315 million views.

Thus, the ordinary ice cream business received millions of new fans in a matter of days.

Little Moons today

In June 2021, the brand's sales reached $ 50 million, and the company already employs over 300 people. The ice cream assortment has been expanded to 12 flavors, and Little Moons is sold in 20 countries in Europe and the Middle East, as well as Singapore.

Little Moons assortment: watch the video

It also started selling products online on a new branded e-commerce site. And among the company's new products there are even vegan formats of unusual ice cream.

Note that Little Moons brand products are also available in Ukraine in some retail chains.