The Red Carpet

Here's what triggered this investigation: Last week, a major retailer pitched a cleaning products opportunity to a creator I know personally. Not the other way around. The retailer approached them with market research, manufacturer connections, and a guaranteed nationwide launch. Meanwhile, a traditional CPG founder with $3M in revenue is still waiting for their first buyer meeting after 9 months.

The data shows this isn't an anomaly, it's the new playbook. Retailers are completely rewriting their rules for celebrity-founded brands, offering terms that would make traditional founders weep. Nationwide distribution on day one. Marketing budgets. Exclusivity windows. Premium shelf placement. All for brands that don't exist yet.

Let me show you why the smartest retailers are treating celebrities like acquisition targets instead of vendors, and what this means for the future of retail.

P.S., from now on, we will be sending this out every Thursday at 12 pm EST, instead of Wednesday.

The Ad

The Director's Cut

The $50 Billion Demographic Time Bomb

Picture this: You're running a major retailer. Your foot traffic has declined 15% over the past five years. Your average customer is 47 years old. Meanwhile, Gen Z represents $360 billion in spending power, but they're doing something your business model never anticipated; they're shopping almost exclusively online.

The younger generation has grown up with same-day delivery, infinite selection, and price comparison at their fingertips. To them, physical retail feels antiquated. Why drive to a store when everything arrives at your door?

This demographic shift represents an existential threat. Every year, your customer base ages while the next generation of spenders develops habits that exclude your stores entirely. E-commerce giants capture their first purchases, their brand loyalties, their shopping rituals. Once those habits form, they rarely change.

Retailers tried everything: store redesigns, mobile apps, social media campaigns, influencer partnerships. Nothing moved the needle significantly. Young shoppers remained ghosts in their aisles.

Then something unexpected happened.

When MrBeast's Feastables launched in Walmart, stores reported something they hadn't seen in years: lines of Gen Z shoppers. Not just a few curious customers, actual crowds. These weren't online shoppers reluctantly visiting a store. They were excited, taking selfies with the displays, turning a routine shopping trip into an event.

One retailer told me: "We realized we'd been thinking about this all wrong. We kept trying to drag young people to our stores. Celebrity-founded brands made them want to come."

Why Retailers Are Going All-In

This revelation triggered a complete strategic shift. Retailers realized celebrity-founded brands weren't just products; they were customer acquisition tools that solved their biggest problem.

Think about traditional customer acquisition. Retailers spend millions on digital ads targeting young consumers. They offer discounts, run promotions, create loyalty programs. But even with massive budgets, converting online-first shoppers to in-store customers remains nearly impossible.

But when those same customers come for a celebrity-founded brand they're excited about? The acquisition cost is effectively zero. The celebrity's audience does the marketing. Social media does the distribution. The retailer just needs to stock the shelves.

More importantly, these customers don't just buy the celebrity product. They explore the store, discover other brands, and establish shopping patterns that can last decades. One trip for Prime hydration becomes a weekly grocery run. A visit for Feastables chocolate introduces them to the retailer's private label snacks.

This is why retailers are now competing aggressively for celebrity-founded brands. They're not really buying products; they're buying access to audiences that traditional marketing can't reach.

The Terms That Would Make You Cry

The desperation to land celebrity-founded brands has created a two-tier system that would shock traditional founders:

Traditional CPG Brand Requirements:

• 12-18 months of proven sales data

• $3M minimum annual revenue

• 6-12 months to get first meeting

• Start in 50 test stores

• Pay slotting fees ($5-50K per SKU)

• Prove velocity for 6 months before expansion

• Marketing support: Your responsibility

Celebrity-Founded Brand Reality:

• Zero sales history required

• Pre-revenue brands welcomed

• Meeting scheduled within 48 hours

• Nationwide launch from day one (3,000-4,000 stores)

• Slotting fees completely waived

• Guaranteed premium shelf placement

• Marketing support: Retailer funded

From the retailer's perspective, the math is simple: A traditional brand might take 5 years to build the audience a celebrity brings on day one.

Real examples show just how extreme this has become:

• Khloud by Khloé Kardashian: 3,400 Target stores on day one

• Feastables by MrBeast: 4,000+ Walmart locations at launch

• W by Jake Paul: 4,000+ Walmart doors from the start

But it goes even further. Retailers are now fighting each other for exclusivity, offering terms that were unthinkable just five years ago:

Exclusivity Windoms: 6-12 month exclusive retail partnerships 

Marketing commitments: $1-5M in dedicated marketing spend 

Endcap guarantees: Premium placement typically reserved for top sellers 

Media support: Retailer-funded TV commercials and digital campaigns

Expansion rights: Automatic approval for line extensions

A beverage founder who spent two years getting into 200 stores watched a celebrity launch in 5,000 stores on day one. "They offered them everything I had to fight for," he told me. "Plus a Super Bowl commercial."

The Retail Courtship Revolution

Retailers aren't waiting for pitches anymore. They're actively hunting celebrities with complete business packages.

When a major retailer noticed their spice aisle skewed heavily toward shoppers 55+ years old, they didn't wait for the market to solve it. They identified a food creator with 8 million young followers and approached them with a comprehensive proposal:

• Market analysis showing the untapped Gen Z spice opportunity

• Pre-vetted manufacturer connections ready to start production

• Margin projections and complete financial modeling

• Guaranteed marketing budget with campaign concepts

• Distribution commitment across all 2,500+ locations

• Full team of experts: packaging designers, formulators, supply chain specialists

One creator told me: "They basically handed me a business in a box. They'd done all the hard work. All I had to do was say yes and pick the flavors. They even had three manufacturers ready to send samples within a week."

This level of preparation would have been unthinkable five years ago. Retailers used to be gatekeepers. Now they're business incubators for celebrities.

Why This Changes Everything for Celebrity-Founded Brands

This shift fundamentally alters the trajectory of celebrity-founded companies. Traditional CPG brands follow a predictable path:

Year 1: Local stores and online sales

Year 2: Regional stores (50-100 locations)

Year 3: Small retail test (200-500 stores)

Year 4-5: National expansion (if lucky)

Celebrity-founded brands are compressing this timeline to months:

Day 1: 3,000+ stores nationwide

Month 6: International expansion discussions

Year 1: Category extensions approved

Year 2: Omnichannel dominance

This acceleration creates unprecedented advantages. When you launch in thousands of stores where consumers already shop, you bypass years of distribution building. Your products sit next to established brands from day one. Your marketing dollars go toward driving sales, not begging for shelf space.

At HotStart VC, we invest in brands founded by celebrities and creators precisely because of this dynamic. Their ability to leverage fame for instant distribution creates growth curves traditional brands can't match. We're not betting on incremental advantages; we're investing in companies that can achieve in one year what others need five years to accomplish.

The Hidden Infrastructure Crisis

But this speed comes with challenges. Going from zero to 4,000 stores requires infrastructure most startups don't have:

• Capital to fund massive inventory requirements

• Manufacturing capacity to fulfill nationwide orders

• Supply chain sophistication to avoid stockouts

• Marketing budgets to support national presence

• Operations teams that can scale overnight

• Working capital to manage 60-90 day payment terms

Many celebrity-founded brands underestimate these requirements. They secure the distribution but can't fulfill the demand. Empty shelves kill momentum faster than never launching at all.

Yet despite these challenges, the celebrity-retail gold rush shows no signs of slowing. If anything, it's accelerating and expanding beyond traditional boundaries.

The International Expansion Accelerant

The competition has gone global, with international retailers and even countries joining the pursuit.

A UK retailer recently flew their entire executive team to Los Angeles for a week of creator meetings. Japanese retailers are offering 40% revenue shares compared to the traditional 20%. Middle Eastern retailers are guaranteeing $10M minimum orders just to secure exclusive regional rights.

But the MrBeast-Saudi Arabia deal shows this phenomenon extending beyond traditional retail. When MrBeast signed his agreement with Saudi Arabia, it wasn't just about stocking Feastables in stores. The country is using his brand to drive tourism, attract younger visitors, and modernize their image. 

This represents a new frontier where celebrities and their brands become tools for economic development, not just retail sales. Countries are competing for celebrity partnerships the way they once competed for factories or tech companies.

The Ripple Effects Nobody Predicted

This shift is creating second-order effects throughout retail:

Traditional Brands Are Getting Squeezed

Every celebrity-founded brand that gets premium shelf space displaces 3-4 traditional brands. One category manager admitted: "We're not expanding shelf space. We're replacing underperformers with celebrity-founded brands that bring traffic."

Private Label Is Suffering

Retailers are sacrificing their own private label space for celebrity-founded brands. The math is simple: A private label product might have 30% margins, but it doesn't bring new customers through the door.

The Service Ecosystem Is Exploding

An entire industry has emerged to facilitate these partnerships:

• Celebrity-founded brand consultants who broker retail relationships

• White label manufacturers specializing in rapid celebrity launches

• Law firms that only handle celebrity retail deals

• Agencies that help retailers identify and approach creators

The Bottom Line 

The retail landscape has fundamentally shifted. This isn't about retailers being starstruck or chasing trends. It's about survival.

Physical retail faces an existential challenge: How do you attract a generation that grew up shopping online? The answer, it turns out, is celebrity-founded brands that transform shopping from a chore into an experience worth sharing.

Retailers who understand this are building the next generation of retail empires. They're not just stocking celebrity products. They're using them as bridges to connect with audiences that traditional retail lost years ago.

The smartest retailers have accepted a new reality: In a world where young consumers have infinite options online, celebrity-founded brands aren't just products on shelves. They're the reason to visit stores at all.

And that's why retailers are breaking every rule, offering unprecedented terms, and fighting each other for the right to stock these brands. Because when the alternative is watching your customer base age out while young shoppers never step foot in your stores, any price seems reasonable.

The golden age of celebrity retail partnerships has arrived. And it's reshaping retail in ways nobody predicted.

The Mic Drop

HotStart VC’s Backstage Pass

HotStart VC Podcast: Episode 1 Is Live

Our first episode of the HotStart VC Podcast is officially here, featuring creator-founder Natalie Barbu. Natalie has spent more than a decade building an audience of 400k+. That journey eventually led her to create Rella, the creator workflow platform now at $2M ARR.

In this episode, Natalie breaks down what inspired her to start Rella, how she raised $1M from well-known VCs as a creator, and the pivots that got the company to meaningful traction.

Now available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Take #20

The retail-celebrity revolution reveals a simple truth: Retailers aren't really in the business of selling products anymore. They're in the business of creating reasons for people to visit their stores.

At HotStart VC, we've watched retailers transform from gatekeepers to eager partners. The shift happened when they realized celebrity-founded brands solve their biggest challenge: bringing younger generations back to physical retail.

The framework is straightforward: Traditional retail competed on convenience and selection. But when online shopping wins both battles, physical retail needs a new advantage. Celebrity-founded brands provide it by turning shopping into a cultural moment worth experiencing in person.

Smart retailers aren't asking "Does this brand deserve shelf space?" They're asking "Will this brand bring new customers through our doors?" And when the answer is yes, they're willing to rewrite every rule to make it happen.

Remember: In a world where everything is available online, the only reason to visit a store is for something you can't get anywhere else or to be part of something bigger than a transaction.

Welcome to the fame game,

Scott

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About HotStart VC

HotStart VC is launching a new fund to invest in brands founded by celebrities and creators. We’re building the go-to platform for creators and celebrities launching brands, providing capital, strategic support, and the infrastructure to scale.