Creator-founded brands are no longer side projects. Hailey Bieber’s Rhode was bought by e.l.f. Beauty in a deal worth up to $1 billion, and Molly-Mae Hague’s businesses are now stocked in Selfridges and Boots. For talent managers, agents and the creators they represent, one question comes up every time a launch is on the table: should the brand mirror the creator, or build a world of its own?
We put both sides forward with the help of Siena Hutchinson, Founder and Creative Director at Hutch & Co. Design.
SIDE A: Yes – The Creator Is the Competitive Advantage
Audiences don’t buy from logos. They buy from people they’ve watched, trusted and listened to for years. Adobe’s survey of 1,000 shoppers found that 56% of consumers have already bought from a creator-led brand, rising to 66% among Gen Z. And according to NeoReach’s 2026 Creator Impact Report, run with Statista, 69% of Gen Z now buy something every month based on a creator’s recommendation.
That trust wasn’t built on a product. It was built on a specific face, voice, taste and way of seeing the world. When a creator launches a brand that looks like every other direct-to-consumer label, they’re asking their audience to start the relationship from scratch, and throwing away the one asset no competitor can copy.
Rhode is the clearest proof. The brand’s minimal look and “glazed” skin positioning grew directly out of Hailey Bieber’s own beauty identity. In under three years it went from launch to $212 million in net sales with around ten products, sold only online. When e.l.f. bought it, Bieber stayed on as chief creative officer and head of innovation. The buyer wasn’t paying to separate the brand from its founder. It was paying for the connection.
Closer to home, Molly-Mae Hague has shown that a brand built around a creator’s personal style can travel well beyond her own feed. Filter by Molly-Mae sits on shelves in Selfridges and Boots, and Maebe, her womenswear label, draws heavily from her personal style. It sold out on launch. Forbes reports her businesses generated around $26 million in revenue in 2025. The argument that a creator-led identity limits retail growth doesn’t hold up when the shelves say otherwise.
There is also a risk in keeping too much distance. When the brand feels detached from the person, the creator can end up looking like a paid ambassador for their own company, and audiences notice. Authenticity isn’t a layer you add on top of a creator brand. It’s the product.
None of this means the brand can’t grow. Creators evolve, and the brand can evolve with them. The job of a good team isn’t to replace the creator’s identity with something more “scalable”. It’s to protect it, sharpen it and give it room to expand.
The question isn’t whether a creator brand can outgrow its founder. It’s why you would hide the thing that made people show up in the first place.
SIDE B: Not Entirely – Siena Hutchinson, Founder of Hutch & Co.
hutch-co.com | LinkedIn
My answer is: not entirely.
One of the biggest advantages a creator has when launching a business is something most brands spend years trying to build: an audience that already knows, trusts and wants to buy from them. That connection is incredibly powerful and I don’t think you should ignore it when building the brand.
But there’s a difference between leveraging a creator’s identity and making the creator the identity.
When we work with creator-founded businesses at Hutch & Co., I always think about the brand beyond launch day. The creator might be the reason someone discovers the product, but the brand itself needs to give them a reason to stay.
We saw this recently while creating the brand identity for Isobel Lorna’s planner brand, Agende. Isobel already had a highly engaged audience and a very recognisable personal style, so it would have been easy to simply replicate her existing aesthetic. Instead, we took elements of the world her audience already connected with and translated them into a distinct brand identity that could belong to Agende.
That distinction becomes even more important as the business grows.
If every part of the brand is built around the founder’s personal image, it can become difficult to reach people who don’t already follow them. It can also limit where the business can go next, whether that’s expanding into new product categories, entering retail, building a team or, eventually, existing without the founder at the centre of everything.
I think the strongest creator-founded brands sit somewhere in the middle. They feel unmistakably connected to the person who created them, but they don’t feel like an extension of their Instagram feed.
The creator brings the audience, trust and cultural relevance. The brand needs to turn that initial attention into something bigger: a recognisable world, a clear point of view and an identity people want to be part of, whether they follow the founder or not.
Because ultimately, if you want to build a business with longevity, people need to fall in love with the brand not only the person behind it.
Where do you stand? Should a creator-founded brand be an extension of the creator, or build an identity of its own? Let us know.
