Natalie Barbu talking with Uscreen COO Matt Estes about creator-led businesses:
We’ve never had this distribution before, though, you know? Like, if you think of our parents’ generation, they were told what to get based on commercials, which was only big companies.
Like, you weren’t gonna hear about a small business in a city 100 miles away from you because the distribution wasn’t there, and that person didn’t have budget.
Matt:
Right.
Natalie:
But, now, the barrier to entry is so much lower because you can just post a TikTok, and blow up. And so, now, I do think that smaller independent owned or creator-led/celebrity-led businesses are gonna be more popular.
Like, I think for my generation, even if we look at, like, tequila, 818 by Kendall Jenner — super popular, you know, I feel like it’s one of the top-grossing tequila companies for, at least, like, my generation.
Or, if you look at, you know — if we’re gonna use the Kardashians as an example — Kim Kardashian, with SKIMS, is definitely disrupting SPANX.
Like, SPANX, even though Sara Blakely is a founder that is well known, it’s still more of an old school business model, versus, like, getting into department stores and, you know — that was her distribution. Whereas, Kardashian has built-in distribution — she doesn’t need that.
Brand partner-heavy creators are waking up to what business-owning creators like Natalie have known for a long time:
- ‘Hey, why am I sponsor-reading someone else’s stuff? I can make and sell my own for 10-100X the money.’
You don’t need to get carried nationwide by Target (although that doesn’t hurt),
All you need is your fans (provided they’re yours), and your own products, selling from a platform you own.
That’s not to imply you should never do an ad read again — it can be tough to crack the creator-making-a-living-wage code without playing the brand sponsor game for a little while.
And, hey, if you feel like influencer life could happily be a forever thing for you — by all means — keep studying those briefs.
But if, like Natalie, you see your future self as more of an owner-creator, there’ll probably be no better time than now to move in that direction.
— Tang
Natalie Barbu’s owned platform is: Rella.
