Star entrepreneurship is not a new topic. For celebrities, diversifying beyond the career of acting—such as equity investments or self-owned brands—is a way to extend the vitality of individual brands and achieve greater business value.
With its strong IP strength and huge fan base, Star's own brand has lower marketing cost and customer acquisition cost than other brands, and it is easier to get capital favor. This is also the biggest advantage of star entrepreneurship.
However, the star-owned brand also faces many practical problems: the star aura is a double-edged sword, the star individual and the brand are very strong, and the personal crisis is equivalent to the brand crisis; the star's lack of business knowledge will limit the brand's advancement. Although the star has a strong fan appeal, but the fan economy has hidden huge uncertainties; the stars are often lacking in skills, it is difficult to invest enough energy in the daily operation of the brand company.
In the past two years, many celebrities at home and abroad have created their own brands, and some have achieved commercial success in stages, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba, Kylie Jenner, etc., and some have already left. Even those brands that have achieved commercial success are not in the process of development.
Goopneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, Goop, has grown rapidly over the past two years, with sales reaching twice the previous year and the company's valuation reaching $250 million. However, Goop, which has been in existence for 10 years, has not yet achieved profitability, and the doubts about its “pseudoscience†have never stopped;
Also from the actor to entrepreneurs, The Honest Company, founded by Jessica Alba, has grown in size over the past few years and has achieved outstanding results in several rounds of financing, with a valuation of $1.7 billion, but it is also facing “final financingâ€. The problem of difficulty is once a dilemma between the IPO and the overall sale;
Victoria Beckham, the eponymous brand that celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is still at a loss. After introducing external investors and hiring the fashion industry veteran to chair the board and hire a new CEO, the brand is working hard to improve corporate governance. The structure, while expanding globally, is a simple and simple policy, and strives to turn a profit this year.
Star brand, how to use its own advantages to upgrade the star effect to the brand effect? "Glory" is an in-depth analysis of the following seven pain points by summarizing the business case of seven overseas brands (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba, Blake Lively, Kylie Jenner, Bono, Sarah Jessica Parker, Victoria Beckham):
1. Is the star's own brand, is it enough to output personal IP?
2, the role of star entrepreneurs: name platform? Personally?
3. How to make the first batch of “water supply†of the brand into a loyal consumer
4. How to continuously upgrade products and continue to create freshness
5, high-profile brand concept: how to withstand the test of the market and consumers
6, how to build a strong team
7. How to introduce external capital support
1. Is the star's own brand, is it enough to output personal IP?
It is not the stars that are consistently recognized by users, but the values ​​represented by the stars and the products created by the brands, especially for non-fan users. Therefore, it is not enough for a star to output personal IP in brand expansion. It is also necessary to export universal values, such as a positive lifestyle and a life attitude, so that consumers can purchase products because they are willing to follow this lifestyle.
In 2008, Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow founded the lifestyle website Goop. Gwyneth Paltrow I like the lifestyle of my friend Amway. At the same time, she also realizes that fans have a strong interest in her lifestyle. At first, Goop is a sharing shopping guide, beauty and health experience, showing my real life. Self-media platform. As women's consumption concept gradually shifted from material to physical and mental health and spiritual positive energy, Gwyneth Paltrow also took advantage of the trend and developed her hobby into a vigorous career. Her own role has also changed from a star to a healthy lifestyle. Opinion leader.
Goop officially launched its e-commerce business in 2012, and launched its own brand in 2016. The sales of the brand's female vitamin supplement Goop Wellness exceeded $100,000 on the same day. There is no doubt that Goop has been committed to exporting a clear lifestyle and attitude to its users since its inception, and has paved the way for the successful launch of e-commerce and its own brands.
“I want to have a healthy lifestyle and refuse to toxic and harmful substances to continue to invade our health. That's why I founded The Honest Company.†Coincidentally, another Hollywood actress Jessica Alba's entrepreneurial project is also standing in the lifestyle. on.
After her daughter was born, Jessica Alba began to focus on the toxic chemicals in everyday household products and turned herself into a specialist in toiletries. Millennials are highly concerned about health issues, and Jessica Alba has also sniffed out the business opportunities. The Honest Company was founded in 2012 to cut into the big market for baby care with its environmentally friendly, non-toxic diapers.
Over the past few years, The Honest Company's sales have experienced rapid growth and accumulated solid brand equity, especially in natural infant and child care and beauty products. The current valuation has reached 17 after several rounds of financing. One hundred million U.S. dollars.
2, the role of star entrepreneurs: name platform or personally?
It is a very common phenomenon for a star to own a personal brand. Traditionally, a star can delegate a generous brand authorization fee and sales share by granting its own name to a certain type of production and dealer, and taking on certain platform promotion obligations. However, as consumers become more rational and mature, the market competition is more intense, and the star's "halo" is no longer a guarantee for the big name brand. For the stars, the platform for authorized products that sells bleak is becoming a "burden" with a very low input-output ratio.
American actress Sarah Jessica Parker, who is a household name with the popular American drama "Sex and the City", was not designed to promote the joint product in the contract after accepting millions of dollars in compensation. In April this year, she was designed by British jewelry. Kat Florence was on the court. (See "Glory" report: Do not take money? American famous actress Sarah Jessica Parker was sued by British jewelry designer Kat Florence for failing to perform.
Nowadays, more and more stars are personally involved in the construction of their own brands, and they have changed from a “Face†to a true “owner†or even “operator†of the brand. Sarah Jessica Parker's frustrated IP commercialization experience is the best testimony to this transformation.
In 2005, Sarah Jessica Parker launched her most successful fashion product, perfume Lovely, and launched six fragrances in the following four years. However, her brand career has been going downhill since 2007: she signed a casual casual wear in 2007. Steve & Barry's, a chain of retail stores, designed the exclusive collection, but the price of a $8.95 cabbage in a dress was a big surprise. It ended in bankruptcy a year later. In 2010, she became the president and shareholder of the famous American fashion brand Halston Heritage, but did not succeed in saving. This veteran of the downhill road, the two sides terminated cooperation two years later.
After accepting the previous failure lessons, Sarah Jessica Parker launched her own women's shoe brand SJP Collection in 2014, but this time she refused to just name it and collect money, but insisted on personally intervening in brand design and product development. Since then, she has continued to expand the fashion map, ushered in another peak of her career: in 2015, after launching the Baguette bag with the Italian luxury brand Fendi, she launched her own bag series; in 2016, she launched the small black dress series SJP LBD. And enter the retail industry to open brand stores, selling footwear series, small black dress series, handbags, jewelry and other accessories.
Another Hollywood actor, Gwyneth Paltrow, has served as CEO and creative director of Goop since its inception, managing day-to-day operations. Many people are worried that her acting career will be affected, but she said, “If I have to define myself, I think I am a creator who follows new things.â€
As a Hollywood actress, Jessica Alba introduced herself on Instagram: the mother of three children, the founder of The Honest Company/Honest Beauty, the bad pinyin, the loyal friend, the actor. Unlike many star entrepreneurs who play tickets, Jessica Alba strives to be a true entrepreneur. The Honest Company's official website calls Jessica Alba “a visionary leader†who is responsible for planning the overall strategy, creative marketing and product innovation at the company.
And Beckham's experience in transforming fashion designers and fashion entrepreneurs from stars is an industry model.
In 2008, Victoria Beckham launched its own high-end fashion brand of the same name. Unlike the star brand that is just a name, Victoria Beckham is fully committed. She is both the founder and the brand creative director. She won the “British Fashion Award†twice in 2011 and 2014, and won the most in the UK in 2014. Successful Entrepreneur Award.
Not only is the designer, Victoria Beckham is also the best spokesperson for his own brand, personally interpreting the different styles of the brand products in various public occasions, and is the master of the brand's advertising blockbuster. At present, the three main business lines of the Victoria Beckham brand are: ready-to-wear, glasses and accessories, of which glasses are the brand's main sales growth engine.
3. How to make the first batch of “water supply†of the brand into a loyal consumer
Since the creation of its own brand Kylie Cosmetics in 2016, 21-year-old American celebrity Kylie Jenner has used her huge social media fan base to develop a small lipstick business into a full-fledged, nearly $800 million makeup empire. She also became the youngest member in history in the history of "Forbes" "2018 American self-made women rich list" with about $900 million in net assets.
Kylie Jenner's fans on social media platforms are not the most popular, but their fans have the highest level of engagement. She has 120 million fans on Instagram and shares her real life through Instagram, including the promotion of her own branded products. Kylie Jenner uses social media to personally communicate with fans and gather fan feedback to help the Kylie Cosmetics brand decide which makeup products to develop. Fans are not only the users of the brand, but also the role of “consultant†behind the development of branded products.
The Honest Company of Jessica Alba believes that the company's values ​​are rooted in “community,†and that the company's safe, effective, and healthy lifestyle is home to many novice moms. The Honest Beauty is more targeted at ordinary millennial professional women who not only have to be mothers but also need to take on more work. On The Honest Beauty's official Instagram, in addition to the release of branded products, beauty tutorials, will also share various verses (spit, heart chicken soup, etc.) in the form of text pictures. These short sentences are often Can cause the user to resonate.
As can be seen from Kylie Cosmetics and The Honest Company, the first consumers of the brand become loyal consumers, and the brand needs to leap from “fan economy†to “community economyâ€, so that fans can change the attribution of star emotions. The attribution of paired brand emotions requires the aggregation of fans and frequent communication and interaction with users, so that users can participate in the daily life of the brand. This kind of interaction can establish a solid and solid relationship between the brand and the consumer, which not only helps to enhance the brand identity, but also promotes the user's active promotion of the brand, laying the foundation for the brand to quickly open the popularity.
4. How to continuously upgrade products and continue to create freshness
The freshness of consumers needs to be met without interruption. At the product level, the most direct way to continuously export freshness includes: continuously upgrading existing products, expanding product lines to meet the higher levels and more diverse needs of older users, and at the same time, colorful cross-border joint activities. It can also stimulate the influx of more new users.
Goop was originally a shopping guide and a beauty sharing platform. Launched in 2012, the company sells a wide range of clothing, accessories and recipes. In 2016, Goop officially launched its own branded products, including skin care products, ready-to-wear, perfumes and other household items. Today, Goop is a comprehensive lifestyle company that combines fashion, beauty, advertising, publishing, blogging, health and medical information portals, and TV reality shows. Goop's services even extend to education, with Santa Monica in Los Angeles having its own campus.
The Honest Company initially focused on household items such as infant care, cleaning and maintenance, and launched the beauty product line The Honest Beauty in 2015. With the expansion of categories and products, The Honest Company has also transformed into a full-scale lifestyle brand. In 2017, infant and beauty products achieved double-digit growth, especially for beauty, which increased by 34%.
As a fashion brand, Victoria Beckham is also expanding its category, such as the joint collaboration with the beauty brand Estée Lauder. In its 2016 fiscal year report submitted to the UK Enterprise Office, the brand specifically stated that the joint product was a great success and sold out in just a few weeks after its launch. It is reported that the brand also intends to expand skin care and perfume categories.
5, high-profile brand concept: how to withstand the test of the market and consumers
Goop, founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, has spurred the Hollywood women's entrepreneurial craze, inspiring a number of stars, formerly Jessica Alba's The Honest Company, followed by Blake Lively's lifestyle website Preserve launched in 2014. The three have many similarities: starting from the online business, paying attention to the social public welfare effect, once formed a three-legged trend. But unlike Goop and The Honest Company, the Preserve was closed only one year after its launch.
Blake Lively has a mission to position Preserve in a website that supports American folk craftsmen and small producers of agricultural and sideline products and inherits local culture. In fact, Preserve put the “public interest goal†at the core of its establishment, but it turns out that this is not an easy task. Although she did not disclose too many reasons for closing the website, she admitted that “the website was not fully prepared and failed to achieve the original missionâ€.
Similar to the fate is the famous rock band U2 lead singer Bono and his wife Ali Hewson co-founded in 2004 the American sustainable eco fashion brand Edun. “Supporting sustainable development in Africa and focusing on social responsibility issues†– As a pioneer in sustainable fashion brands, Edun’s brand proposition is very advanced and has attracted a lot of attention for its early development. At the same time, Edun's contribution to improving the trading environment in Africa is obvious to all. The brand has worked with more than 8,000 farmers in Uganda to guide their cotton planting techniques and improve the literacy level of locals. In 2009, French luxury goods group LVMH acquired a 49% stake in Edun, and the brand received strong endorsements from industry giants.
However, since its establishment 14 years ago, Edun has not been able to establish a clear brand identity, experienced a number of designer changes, and did not establish a stable pricing mechanism and distribution channels. More importantly, Edun's products failed to attract enough consumer interest and were in a long-term loss. In the first half of 2018, LVMH ended its nine-year investment partnership with Edun, and the brand ceased operations in the United States. Despite the dazzling aura of the head, Edun finally let investors lose confidence.
Blake Lively's Preserve, Bono's Edun, their brand has brought its own charity attributes since its inception, occupying a fairly high moral level. It is undeniable that the moral mission-oriented, to a certain extent, will bring a halo to the brand, but how to effectively integrate the public welfare goals into the market demand, truly have a healthy self-hematopoietic function, is still the ideal new generation of fashion and lifestyle entrepreneurs The problem facing.
In addition, some star brands have earned their eyeballs at the beginning of their establishment with high-profile brand proposition and unique positioning, but also caused consumers to question. For example, Goop is also controversial at the same time of rapid development. Many mainstream doctors have denounced their healthy lifestyle claims as “pseudoscienceâ€. A doctor even wrote 150 blogs since 2015 to testify Goop's mistakes. Unscientific, the New York Times also issued a document questioning the level of content on the Goop website.
The Honest Company, which specializes in “natural environmental protectionâ€, has also repeatedly fallen into consumer disputes about product ingredients. For example, the brand's children's sunscreen has been repeatedly complained by consumers because of the poor sunscreen effect, and has to remove the product; more consumers directly sued the court, saying that The Honest's products are called "natural", but actually With the chemical additive SLS, The Honest finally settled the lawsuit for $1.55 million and made a commitment to “reset product ingredientsâ€.
6, how to build a strong team
The success of a star-selected partner is key to the company's continued growth.
Kylie Jenner, 21, spent nearly 18 months selling Kylie Cosmetics for nearly $500 million. Kylie Jenner's career is not difficult, such as the dazzling aura of "the youngest daughter of the first online red family Kardashian family" and "the most valuable opinion leader on social media." In fact, the success of Kylie Cosmetics is largely due to its partner, Beauty Incubator Seed Beauty. At the time, Kylie Jenner found the founder of Seed Beauty, Laura Nelson, and talked to her about the idea of ​​starting a business. The two hit it off.
With its own R&D, production and service capabilities for the entire industry chain of makeup products, Seed Beauty is able to respond quickly based on feedback from fans and help Kylie Cosmetics bring a wave of new products to the market for continuous iterative optimization. “Kylie Jenner has found the best shortcut to success, and our business capabilities and her unique vision for the product have made the brand a great success in a short period of time after its establishment.†Laura Nelson commented.
The Honest Company has been in business for more than three years, and Jessica Alba believes that the most important thing to set up a company is to find partners and form early teams. Of course, the partner is not static. Entrepreneurship is a long-distance running. At every point of time, you need to choose the person who is most suitable for the company.
Jessica Alba first turned his health consultant, Christopher Gavigan, into the first partner. After that, he took the initiative to recommend himself to Brian Lee (an Internet brand serial entrepreneur and investor) with a project proposal. After being rejected, he passed the evil. Complementing business knowledge and making a comprehensive revision of the business plan ultimately impressed Brian Lee to join the company as his second partner, and Brian Lee also brought in a third partner, Sean Kane.
Brian Lee played a key role in the company's start-up and early financing, and when the company's growth was bottlenecked and people with more retail experience needed to join during the transition, Jessica chose to change the CEO – Nick from Clorox Vlahos is responsible for various strategies such as retail distribution, digital marketing and global expansion.
This year, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the eponymous brand, Victoria Beckham appointed fashion industry veteran Ralph Toledano as chairman of the company's board of directors. Ralph Toledano, 67, is one of the most respected executives in the French fashion and luxury industry. Victoria Beckham said that the arrival of Ralph Toledano will drive the company to further expand its business and help the company return to profitability.
Creating a brand involves many links and details: company strategy, brand positioning, product design, supply chain, marketing, sales, finance, etc. The star's ability circle is limited, and it is difficult to succeed alone. Usually, star entrepreneurs need to find one or several partners with complementary capabilities to build an efficient and capable team to complete one “an impossible task†on the road of brand development.
7. How to introduce external capital support
Although many stars have a lot of money, personal money and corporate money are two concepts. On the one hand, supporting a new brand from scratch, from small to large, requires continuous, large capital investment, and needs to bear a lot of risks. In the stage of brand growth and development, external capital is usually required, especially for professional investment institutions. On the other hand, external investors bring not only money, but also strategic guidance, professional talents, industrial resources and standardized corporate governance structures.
At the same time, the star's own IP entrepreneurial brand, in the current scarcity of attention, does increase the chances of success in entrepreneurship, often getting the favor of individual and institutional investors, the star-owned brands mentioned above are developing. External investment was introduced at different stages.
Since 2016, Victoria Beckham has been looking for minority investors to fund the expansion of the brand's international retail network. In November 2017, the Victoria Beckham brand received a £30 million minority equity investment in the UK private equity fund Neo Capital, which was used to strengthen digital and physical retail operations, consolidate core categories and expand new categories and business partnerships.
In March 2018, Goop announced the completion of a $50 million Series C financing, with a total financing of $82 million. The new round of financing is mainly used to expand the international market.
In June 2018, The Honest Company announced that it had received a $200 million minority equity strategic investment from L Catterton, the world's largest consumer goods investment fund, and the company has completed seven rounds of financing with a total financing of more than $500 million. The new round of financing is mainly used to enhance its operational capabilities in the supply chain and international expansion.
Compared with overseas stars, Chinese stars are at the stage of exploring their own brands. In recent years, they have been involved in hot industries such as catering, technology, fashion and lifestyle, and have added another identity outside their jobs – brand founders, managers, etc.:
The following are some of the representative Chinese star brands selected. Who are you more optimistic about?
Edison Chen & CLOT
Yu Wenle & MADNESS
Ashin & STAYREAL
Jay Chou & PHANTACi
Luo Zhixiang & STAGE
Li Chen, Pan Yibai & NPC
Hu Jun & JUN by YO
Wang Feng & FIIL
Fan Bingbing & FAN BEAUTY
Xie Na & NAYOUNG
Carina Lau & ANIRAC
......