Starting a business in the thick of the pandemic is not the easiest road to success, but Reels and other short-form video options have helped propel direct-to-consumer beauty brand Youthforia to four times the revenue in 2022 than it took in the previous year.

“Not going out and seeing people, I realized makeup was part of your routine,” Youthforia founder Fiona Chan told Adweek. “I wanted something that would be a part of routine post-pandemic.”

While Reels are the driving force behind Youthforia’s growth, it also creates content for TikTok and YouTube Shorts. The company is so young that Chan pointed out, “I never actually experienced Facebook prior to the iOS changes.”

“Short-form video was how we grew our business, and Reels is our biggest source of growth,” Chan said, adding that the company has played well in the content segment of videos 15 seconds or shorter—“So many of our videos that have done well are like eight seconds”—and adding that Youthforia will occasionally extend out to 30 seconds to incorporate more storytelling and behind-the-scenes content.

Youthforia relies on Instagram DMs to engage with its community and learn which products to create, and it is an active community, with Chan saying, “People following us when we had 100-something followers were happy to see us go through these wins and get into Ulta Beauty.”

Ulta Beauty stores began stocking Youthforia products in October.

Short-form video has even become a family affair for Chan, as one of the company’s best-performing videos to date featured her mom using one of its products.

“It was one of the biggest surprises I’ve seen this year,” she said. “My mom texted me the video, and we edited it and put it on Instagram. It was kind of an accident.”