Pink Palm Puff's $89 hoodies are the hot new tween status symbol. Meet the 17-year-old founder.

It was summertime when Lauren Brown's daughter pleaded with her to buy an $89 hoodie.

"I thought the price tag was a little steep so I told her, maybe for her birthday," Brown told Business Insider. She kept asking for it, and that fall, for her eighth birthday, Ada got the hoodie of her dreams.

The hoodie wasn't any regular sweatshirt, at least not in the eyes of Gen Alpha. It was a Pink Palm Puff — a new obsession of tween and teen girls reminiscent of the Stanley water bottle craze.

"I first saw Pink Palm Puff on YouTube, and I thought they were going to be so comfy, and I loved the designs and colors," Ada Brown, 8, told BI. "My friends asked where I got them, and I told them Pink Palm Puff. I also have the pajamas now."

Lily Balaisis founded Pink Palm Puff in 2023 when she was just 15 years old and living in the suburbs of Toronto. With a keen sense of the teen fashion landscape and some social marketing smarts, she helped it catch fire on YouTube and TikTok, seemingly overnight.

"I feel like there's many components to a good hoodie," Balaisis told Business Insider. Comfort is key. The design is also important. It's "either on trend at the moment or has good colorways that match your outfit."

The brand currently sells pastel-hued sweatshirts and matching sweatpants. A line of beachy short pajamas costing $89 per set was added in February and immediately sold out, according to Linas Balaisis, the brand's president and Lily's father.

"I feel like in my generation, pajamas are super popular," the younger Balaisis said.

The brand's official TikTok account has amassed over 545,000 followers and 9.8 million "likes" (nearly as many as tween leisurewear icon Lululemon) and its YouTube account has 565,000 subscribers. The garments have frequently sold out over the last year, leaving some parents stymied — especially over the holidays. Mr. Balaisis declined to reveal sales numbers but said that they have exceeded expectations.

One sign pointing to Pink Palm Puff's growing cultural relevance is the rise of counterfeits. Lookalike hoodies with names like "pink pom puff" that sell for under $10 have been popping up on Amazon and TikTok Shop. (Amazon is removing some "dupe" listings after BI asked about them). A handful of sites also feature similar-looking hoodies with misspellings of the brand in the URL.

Lily's father, who's worked in finance and marketing, said he's proud of his daughter's success. He now manages the business's day-to-day operations full time.

"I told her, just take care of demand, and I'll take care of the rest," he told BI.

How Pink Palm Puff took off

Lily Balaisis got a crash course in social marketing when she launched her first product — a slime concoction — when she was 11. The idea to start a fashion line centered on hoodies seemed like a natural next move.

"If you looked in my closet, there were hundreds of hoodies; I would say I would call myself a hoodie fanatic, honestly," Balaisis said. "I just had so many hoodies that was something that I truly loved, something that all my friends truly loved and something that I feel like I could be able to translate well into a business."

The $89 price point for the hoodies has made them somewhat vexing for the millennial and Gen X parents who remember American Apparel prices (parents may also be confused that there are no drawstrings — Balaisis said that her generation is anti-strings in hoodies). The high price reflects the cost of the embroidery of the designs on the back, sleeve, and front, as well as the quality of the plush fabric (the sweatshirts are made overseas), she said.

The hoodies ship to customers in colorfully printed boxes with dust bags, as if they were luxury purses. The high-end packaging plays into the overall cost, but it also serves as marketing: an unboxing moment that teens can post online.

"We take pride in a really good unboxing moment, I call it," Balaisis said.

When she launched the brand, Balaisis cultivated a community of other young influencers who she identified as having a "preppy" aesthetic and gave them free sweatshirts to spread the word.

(Some adults over 30 may be surprised to discover that the term "preppy" means something quite different than when they were teens. For young girls today, preppy means super girly, bright colors, lots of pink, and skirts with ruffles. To translate for millennials: think Regina George, not Blair Waldorf. Expensive pink and pastel sweatshirts fit right into this new version of prep).

The sweatshirts have a beachy motif — the most popular one has the phrase "everything comes in waves." Although Balaisis lives in Canada, she told Business Insider she is inspired by the coastal aesthetic and loves to visit Florida.

Casey Lewis, a youth consumer trend analyst who writes the newsletter After School, saw that Pink Palm Puff hoodies were a hot item when looking at teens' social posts about wishlists.

"It's very much the Stanley tumbler effect," Lewis told Business Insider about how Pink Palm Puff spread so virally on social media. "Having these 'it' items signals to others that you're part of a club, and the fact that the brand was founded by a cool teen girl makes it even more of a desirable club."

The $45 Stanley Quencher became a tween status symbol in recent years, boosted by social media and the scarcity of some color varieties. As its popularity soared, sales jumped from $70 million in 2019 to $750 million in 2023, CNBC reported.

Scarcity is also an element of Pink Palm Puff's business.

A Facebook group dedicated to the brand is mostly full of moms and grandmothers of young girls who are dying for a sweatshirt. A constant topic of discussion is whether someone accidentally ordered from a scam site. One parent said she had inadvertently ordered from "pinkpalmpuffhoodies.ru" and received a purple sweatshirt that appeared to be of lesser quality — but her daughter was happy with it anyway.

What's next for Pink Palm Puff and its founder

Running a business at 17 isn't easy. Balaisis said she recently switched to online school to accommodate her travel schedule and that she plans on going to college.

"I would say the most challenging aspect I feel like would be managing my time," Balaisis said. "I feel like I spend so much time on my business where I'll find myself even just pulling all-nighters. I do get tired, but I never get tired of it, if that makes sense."

The things that Balaisis loves most about running Pink Palm Puff are going on brand trips and engaging with a community of preppy girl fans — she's even become close friends with a preppy influencer through this.

In the near future, Pink Palm Puff is adding more hoodie colors and a swimsuit line. But Balaisis has big plans for the brand's future — hiring staff, possibly having storefronts, and expanding internationally.

"I feel like it's not something where I want to scale so fast where I don't pay attention to the quality and I don't pay attention to the aesthetic of the product," Balaisis said.