Brand Partnerships

10 Inspiring Influencer Founded Brands And Why They Work

Oct 16, 2024 | By Chris Jacks

It wasn’t long after influencers started getting inundated with requests for brand partnerships that a thought occurred to them.

If they’re such a great platform for promoting other brands, why not start their own brand?

What was once a novel concept is now commonplace among influencers of all sizes. Using the audience and reach they’ve carefully cultivated to launch a new brand makes perfect business sense. 

They have a receptive audience and they can eliminate one of the major costs and hurdles when launching a brand, which is marketing expenses.

Many influencer founded brands have gone on to generate millions in annual revenue, with some such as the beauty brand Glossier being valued in the billions.

To help inspire and give you some ideas for your own marketing journey, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 influencer founded brands along with what helped make each one so successful.

Prime Drinks: Logan Paul’s Billion-Dollar Juggernaut

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Logan Paul was one of the early influencers who gained stardom on social media. Paul sensed an opportunity with the short video platform Vine and dropped out of college in 2014 to pursue his media career full-time.

The move paid off as Paul is one of the top-earning influencers on YouTube and has parlayed his success into several profitable ventures including sports promotions, acting, podcasts, and the hydration beverage Prime.

Paul partnered with fellow influencer and professional boxer KSI to launch Prime and it experienced explosive growth and sales from day one.

Prime experienced explosive growth from the onset and in 2023 alone raked in $1.2 billion in sales. An amazing feat considering the brand was launched one year earlier in January of 2022.

One of the keys to Prime’s success was through the use of Instagram. Paul’s Prime Instagram account boasted higher-than-average engagement for nearly every post on the platform.

Posts are colorful, vibrant, and offer different styles that capture attention. They also fully leverage partnerships with trending celebrities to further boost their reach across Instagram.

Beyond Instagram, Prime is also featured on Paul’s YouTube podcast “impaulsive” which is also available on a variety of streaming platforms.

Prime has seen sales dip in 2024, but this is the result of not being able to maintain such explosive growth. A leveling off is to be expected after such a meteoric rise and the brand is still wildly profitable for Paul and KSI.

Being in the beverage space, they also have the opportunity to expand into new flavors and drink types as trends change. This is why the beverage industry is often a lucrative entry point for influencers looking to start their own brand.

As trends and tastes change, they can quickly adapt their product and keep things fresh without the need for major retooling.

Beverage brands like Prime are based on a lifestyle and connection with the brand’s founders. This means they can change the product while maintaining that same connection to drive sales growth and find new markets.

Frankies Bikinis: From Humble Beginnings

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The founder of Frankies Bikinis is more of an accidental influencer. Francesca Aiello started her fashion brand 12 years ago at the age of 18 along with her mother.

Although she had an Instagram account, it was pretty typical for a smaller startup and not the powerhouse it is today.

However, as soon as A-list celebrities were spotted in her offerings, her Instagram account started to blow up, setting the path toward becoming a top Instagram fashion influencer along with her clothing brand.

Francesca has continued to cultivate and evolve her online presence and influencer status. Unlike some other brands that use over-the-top marketing, Francesca focuses on more down-to-earth content across her Instagram and other social media accounts.

It’s a perfect example that showcases the flexibility brands can have when building their presence online. You don’t need to copy the latest trend or the biggest influencers.

Instead, focusing on a strategy that fully aligns with your goals, product, and audience will always perform best.

While one million Instagram followers and another 350K on TikTok may not seem as high as some other influencers, it’s plenty to drive her brand to new heights.

Francesca was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for her unique approach to selling and marketing fashion in the age of influencers and social media.

Chiara Ferragni: From Fashion Blog To Fashion Brand

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Chiara wasn’t new to the fashion industry when she started her small blog in 2009. She was a model at the age of 16 and signed to a modeling agency in Milan, Italy.

Although she did have success as a model, she decided to quit to pursue other goals and find new ways to explore her passion for fashion.

The result was the Blond Salad fashion blog that she co-founded with Riccardo Pozzilo. The blog became so influential that it landed Chiara on the cover of Vogue, the first time any blogger was featured on the cover.

From the success of her blog, her Instagram account grew to what is now over 30 million followers. This allowed her to charge up to $12,000 per sponsored post in the early days when she had about a third fewer followers.

By 2014, she used her well-earned fashion clout to launch her footwear brand, the Chiara Ferragni Collection. The brand was a huge success and in 2022, had $13 million in annual revenue.

While fashion blogs are common, they may not be as much of a force in other industries and niches. However, Chiara shows that you can launch a highly successful influencer brand from the humble beginnings of a written blog.

Blogs still hold value in today’s social media-dominated digital landscape. They can be an integral part of an overall online presence and can be adapted to almost any industry where audiences seek out trends and new developments.

The trick is to find your unique take and angle that keeps audiences coming back for a perspective and insight they can’t find anywhere else.

Once you have this, you can start to grow your blog into various social media channels to expand the reach and engagement with your audience.

Refy: Co-Founded By Jess Hunt

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Although Jess Hunt sometimes downplays her role as an influencer, she also credits the enormous power of social media in building her brand and connecting with her loyal customers.

When Hunt was 18 and attending college, she started her fashion-focuses Instagram account. The account quickly grew a strong dedicated following that now tops over 2 million followers.

Two years after launching her Instagram account, she co-founded a cosmetic brand focused on brow products named Brow Sculpt. What started as a simple line of products quickly grew to over 40 total products across the brand.

Parlaying the success, she launched Refy to expand the product line even further and offer more options to her eager customers.

Refy’s success on Instagram is based on a unique content strategy that mixes highly polished fashion-style images with real testimonials and before-and-after shots from actual customers.

This juxtaposition between the glam and the real-world examples really helps to engage with customers and show them the power and the difference the products can make.

Hunt’s TikTok also shares behind-the-scenes looks as she participates in fashion events around the world along with tutorials and product and product spotlights.

Refy stands as a great example that a “TikTok brand” can elevate and become much more than a side hustle for an influencer. With dedication and a commitment to the customer, a social media founded brand can stand alone and make its mark on the industry as a whole.

EM Cosmetics: Fashion Empire

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Michelle Phan started a simple makeup and tutorial blog in 2005. After numerous requests from her fans, she started posting video tutorials on the site Xanga.

Soon, she moved to YouTube in 2007 where her popularity really started to take off.

The real turning point for Phan was when several of her tutorials went viral on the Buzzfeed website. Her viral success landed her an official role with Lancome to create exclusive tutorial content for the brand.

Her first brand was Ipsy’s which she later used to buyout EM Cosmetics from Loreal. EM Cosmetics was a brand dedicated to Phan’s mother and Phan continues to run the brand today. She has since resigned from Ipsy’s and no longer is involved with the brand.

Phan is an intriguing example of how an influencer can go from simple tutorials to being a powerhouse in the cosmetics industry. From a personal blog, she was able to build a brand and empire that allowed her to buy shares from an existing multinational cosmetics company.

Phan has focused on her tutorial-style content since the beginning and that method still holds true as she continues to manage social media accounts.

In fact, many people credit Phan with creating the very first YouTube make-up tutorial when she joined the platform around 2007.

Phan is a part of influencer history and it shows that despite the up-and-down nature of social media, brands and creators can have continued and long-term success if they stay true to their origins and deliver what their audience wants.

Be My Travel Muse: A Detour Becomes A Million-Dollar Success Story

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Beauty and fashion brands are red hot on social media, but that doesn’t mean influencers can find huge success across other industries.

Be My Travel Muse, founded by Kristen Addis is a perfect example. Kristen used her lifestyle shift to a digital nomad to help launch her social media presence and later her successful travel brand.

After leaving her job in finance, she documented her backpacking journeys across various global destinations. Her style and empowering message for female solo travels resonated and she quickly attracted a large following.

Addis has since expanded her content offerings and now shares travel experiences with her daughter. She details how to travel with a family and incorporate fun adventures into any itinerary.

Like many influencers on our list, Kristen incorporates a blog as part of her success. This allows her to share long-form written content to better connect with audiences who are eager to hear every detail of her adventures.


Blogs are an often underrated aspect of many influencer-founded brands. Unlike social media accounts, a blog gives the influencer full control and ownership of every aspect of the site. This allows for more ways to connect with audiences and also more ways to grow and monetize their efforts.

The takeaway from Kristen Addis’ success and many other influencer founders is that a blog can either start your brand or elevate it to an entirely new level.

Wildflower Cases: Turning A Chance Encounter Into A Thriving Business

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Phone cases can be an extremely competitive marketplace that makes it difficult to stand out. The relatively low barrier to entry and influx of copycats can hamper even the best strategy.

The founder of Wildflower Cases, Devon Lee, used a bit of serendipity and a chance meeting with pop star Miley Cyrus to help start her influencer brand journey.

After a chance meeting with Cyrus in California, Lee gave the pop star a custom phone case that she created along with other members of her family.

Cyrus posted about the exchange on her Twitter account and Wildflower Cases quickly went from a small passion project to a flourishing brand.

But while that may seem like just a fortunate break, it still took an incredible amount of work and sacrifice to parlay the Miley Cyrus mention into the brand that Wildflower is today.

To fund her brand, the family sold their house and used the proceeds to build inventory and help capitalize on their internet virality. There was no guarantee that her success would continue, so it was a big risk that paid off.

The success of her phone cases blossomed into a full design career. Lee has since worked with brands like Marc Jacobs and even was a designer for the Olivia Rodrigues music video Good 4 U.

Devon continued her success by leveraging collaborations with YouTube influencers. This helped expand the reach of her brand and find new audiences for her growing creative empire.

The lesson here is to make sure you take advantage of any traction you receive. If a post or piece of content related to your brand goes viral, you really need to capitalize on that during the early stages of your brand’s trajectory.

Those situations don’t come often, and when they do you have to double down and use them for everything they’re worth.

We often think one viral post can make an influencer, but we usually don’t see the hard work and long hours behind the scenes to take full advantage of the moment.

Voice Swap AI: Influencer Founded Tech Company

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Influencer founded brands have come a long way in recent years. While beauty and fashion are still big, influencers are now starting their own tech startups.

A perfect example is musician and influencer Benn Jordan. Jordan, a self-described introvert, turned his passion for music production into a YouTube channel that experienced steady growth.

Benn has had several businesses over the years attached to his musical social media channels and he recently launched a tech company called Voice Swap AI.

But unlike many other AI tools, Voice Swap takes an ethical approach to AI voice cloning and allows artists to license out their vocal likeness to other music producers.

With typical AI voice or video tools, the system trains itself on copyrighted data but offers those creators no money in return for using their work.

Voice Swap AI pays creators who lend their voicse to the service and gives them control over how their voices are used.

Jordan announced his new co-founded brand to his nearly 500k YouTube subscribers and the news quickly went viral.

His new product was featured in news articles and even well-known DJ Diplo applauded the direction that Jordan was taking.

This really is a unique situation where influencer marketing and influencer founded brands have now breached the high-tech arena, and specifically the cutting edge of AI technology.

Tech influencers are nothing new, but launching a tech brand in the AI space as an influencer is unique and it shows the power that influence marketing now has.

CRAFTD: Industry Insight Leads To A Perfect Product Market Fit

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From a demographic perspective, popular influencer platforms like Instagram and TikTok tend to skew toward female audiences. But male influencers are also connecting with audiences and having great success by starting unique brands.

Influencer Alex Cannon is a perfect example of that trend. Mostly known for his male modeling career which he helped to bolster with his Instagram account, Cannon also starred in several reality TV shows.

Cannon also has an entrepreneurial side, and he noticed a gap in the market for men’s high-quality jewelry designed for modern consumers.

Investing only a few thousand dollars, Cannon and his co-founder started the jewelry brand CRAFTD and he began marketing it through his Instagram and other social media channels.

Cannon’s business instincts were correct and according to an interview with Forbes, he received thousands of orders on the first day.

Launched in 2018, by 2020 CRAFTD was experiencing 400% growth per year, a stunning figure considering the entire project was launched with only a few thousand dollars.

A key component of CRAFTD’s success on social media is how the brand is presented. The goal is to show CRAFTD jewelry as being a fashion necessity for men from all walks of life.

From musicians to professional fighters to businessmen, CRAFTD showcases pieces that fit any lifestyle and each piece adds that final showcase element to a wardrobe.

Recently, CRAFTD has leaned into TikTok for more video content that gives customers and fans an insider’s view of how each jewelry piece is designed and manufactured.

This shows a continued effort to cultivate an audience and help explain the value that the products offer instead of just focusing on more superficial criteria.

Overall, CRAFTD is an example of an influencer using their subject matter expertise to find a perfect product market fit. As someone in the fashion industry, he knew there was an opportunity in the men’s jewelry space since he often had difficulty finding his own pieces.

The takeaway is that if you’re an influencer in a specific industry, you likely have inside knowledge and insight that is more valuable than you realize.

If you have an idea for a product or service based on that insight, take your instincts seriously because you very well may be the only one to realize how powerful the idea is.

Djerf Avenue: A Family Vacation Kicks Off An Entrepreneurial Journey

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A common theme on this list is influencers who already had a substantial following before launching their own brand. Whether it was modeling or success on TV or acting, it’s not uncommon for these influencers to transition from social media stars to entrepreneurs.

Matilda Djerf started from more humble beginnings. After a vacation with family, she decided to write about her experiences on a blog.

Her style and content quickly drew fans and she found herself in the nascent stages of social media stardom.

Early on, she did what most influencers do and partnered with outside brands. However, she felt she lacked a certain control with this approach. Over time, she needed the ability to control a product from start to finish to ensure it aligned with what her audience expected.

Djerf Avenue was born and it was launched on a bit of a shoestring budget.

Similar to how CRAFTD was launched, Matilda used her own knowledge and experience to create the first fashion pieces for the brand.


The inspiration was clothing she specifically could not find yet felt was essential.

Djerf shared with Forbes that marketing expenses for the brand were less than 5% of total revenue. A shockingly low number for a fashion brand but it illustrates how powerful social media can be. 

Djerf Avenue is yet another example of an influencer using their unique perspective within an industry to develop a brand that immediately caters to an unsatisfied demand.

While it may seem on the outside that these influencers are just leveraging their audiences, they’re actually providing a missing piece within an industry. 

That’s the true reason for the success but since the ideas come so organically, it’s easy to mistake them for a whim or shot in the dark. But the truth is, they are born of market and industry insights through engaging with an audience each day.

Key Takeaways From These Successful Influencer Founded Brands

The point of listing out these influencer founded success stories is to help inspire you. But beyond just inspiration, there are also many lessons to learn to help you be successful while on your own journey.


Below, we’ll list the key takeaways that keep coming up when researching influencer-founded brands.

Influencer Success Isn’t Always Overnight

On the outside, it may appear that top influencers and their brand were overnight success stories. But digging a little deeper it becomes obvious that success was often years in the making.

Whether it was working in a related field before becoming an influencer or starting from humble beginnings with zero followers and a blog, it was consistent hard work that paid off in the end.

Don’t expect your audience or your brand to take off overnight. Take your time to build your audience and understand the space before launching your brand. 

The knowledge you gain in the process will be the most valuable asset to ensure your brand is a success when you’re ready to launch.

Take Advantage Of Viral Moments

Whether big or small, make sure to take advantage of those viral moments or mentions. One trend you’ll notice in influencer brand success stories is how they sometimes boil down to one chance mention or partnership on social media.


When these things happen, you need to be ready to jump on the opportunity and make the most of it.

To help increase your chances, always be on the lookout for ways to spark that type of viral moment. Use your creativity and insights to find ways to create content that will have an instant impact on the audience.

Remember that a viral moment is just a start. Hard work and consistency keep the momentum going.

Be Authentic

Another key takeaway is how successful influencers never strayed away from their core ideas and strategy. The brands were always a perfect extension of the image and lifestyle they created with their social media accounts.

Don’t Chase The Latest Trends 

This is similar to the above takeaway of being authentic. None of these successful influencers really followed the trend of the moment or tried to sell what was hot.

It was always an extension of their own image and insights into the marketplace. With something like fashion, you obviously react to trends, but that’s specific to your products.

But this is about the core of the brand, not the specific pieces or products you produce.

The core of the brand you create should always be rooted in something you believe and not just a knee-jerk reaction to what’s trending or what’s working for someone else.

Consider A Blog

The simple and humble blog has almost been forgotten like an internet relic. But as we’ve seen in so many influencer brands, starting out as a blog is a common theme.

Many influencers also transition to a blog to help round out their digital presence and overall reach.

A blog offers a lot of options for monetization, engaging with customers, and having full control of every touchpoint.

A blog is also perfect if your brand or story lends itself to longer, more thoughtful content that revolves around the written word. Such content is difficult or impossible on most social media platforms.

Start On Your Influencer Marketing Journey

Hopefully, these examples inspired you or gave you new insight into how influencer founded brands came to success.

These are just a handful of examples and new brands are launching every day.

The power of influencer marketing is only growing and smart marketers are harnessing this power to the fullest in today’s competitive digital environment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Jacks is an influencer marketing professional with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing sphere. As the Director of Growth Strategy, Chris oversees and drives strategic initiatives to fuel business expansion. With a keen eye for market trends and opportunities, Chris develops comprehensive growth plans and aligns business objectives across cross-functional teams. With a strong focus on crafting impactful, ROI-driven influencer campaigns across multiple sectors, Chris utilizes his expertise to enhance market positioning and maximize results.

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