How to Build a Brand Around an Artist, Not Just Beside One

The old model was simple: get famous, sign an endorsement deal, put your face on someone else's product, collect a check. It worked for decades. It built careers. And it's now the slowest way to build wealth in entertainment.

The artists and celebrities who are building real, lasting businesses aren't lending their names to brands. They're becoming the brand. And the difference between those two approaches (endorsement vs equity) is the difference between a paycheck and a portfolio.

The Endorsement Trap

An endorsement deal is a transaction. A brand pays you for access to your audience. You do the campaign, maybe a social post, maybe an event. The brand keeps the equity, the customer data, the margins. You keep a fee. This is fine for short-term income. But it builds nothing. When the deal ends, you walk away with money but no asset. No ownership. No compounding value. For years, this was the default for artists, especially in music. You tour, you stream, you do brand deals. The labels own your masters. The brands own the products. You own your name and not much else.

That model is breaking.

The Equity Shift

Look at what's actually working in 2025 and 2026.

Hailey Bieber launched Rhode in 2022 with a tight product line, a clear point of view, and real ownership. Three years later, she sold it to e.l.f. Beauty for $1 billion. Not a licensing deal; a sale of an asset she built and owned. Rhode did $212 million in revenue in its last year. That's not celebrity perfume money. That's a real business.

Rihanna's Fenty Beauty hit $600 million in annual revenue. She owns 50% of the company. Her stake alone is worth $1.4 billion — more than she ever made from music. Fenty wasn't built on fame. It was built on a genuine insight (inclusive shade ranges) that happened to be championed by someone with massive cultural reach.

LeBron James built SpringHill Company from a barbershop-conversation show into a media and consumer products empire valued at $725 million. He didn't just star in content, he built the infrastructure to produce it, market it, and own it.

Kim Kardashian's SKIMS reached a $4 billion valuation by solving a real product problem (inclusive shapewear) and building genuine brand equity beyond her personal celebrity.

The pattern is clear: the biggest wins come from founders who happen to be famous, not famous people who happen to have a brand deal.

Why Most Celebrity Brands Fail

For every Rhode, there are a hundred celebrity brands that launch to hype and die within two years. The reason is almost always the same: no product differentiation, no defined audience, and no real founder involvement beyond the name on the label.

The cautionary tale everyone should be studying right now is Prime.

Logan Paul and KSI launched Prime hydration in 2022. It did $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023, driven almost entirely by hype and scarcity marketing. Kids were reselling cans for hundreds of dollars. Retailers couldn't keep it on shelves. Then the fundamentals caught up. By 2025, revenue had collapsed to an estimated $300 million, a 76% decline. UK revenue dropped 71% in a single year. Their bottling partner sued them. A Canadian subsidiary went into receivership. The FDA questioned their marketing to children.

What went wrong? Everything that the successful brands got right.

Prime had no product differentiation. It was just another hydration drink in a crowded market. It had no real brand identity beyond the creators' personal audiences. It had no defined consumer beyond "fans of Logan Paul and KSI." And when the hype cycle ended, there was nothing underneath to sustain it.

The lesson: fame can get you distribution, but it can't get you repeat purchases. A brand built on hype has a shelf life. A brand built on genuine insight and real product-market fit compounds.

The Framework: What Separates a Brand From a Brand Deal

After studying what works and what doesn't across entertainment, beauty, spirits, and consumer products, the pattern comes down to five things.

1. Authentic founder connection, not just a name. Rhode works because Hailey Bieber is genuinely obsessed with skincare and her audience knows it. Fenty works because Rihanna identified a real problem she personally experienced. The brand has to be an extension of who the person actually is, not a category they were assigned by a licensing agent.

2. A real product insight, not just packaging. The product has to solve something or offer something the market doesn't already have. Rhode's peptide lip treatment wasn't just a celebrity lip gloss, it was a genuinely good product at an accessible price point. SKIMS solved an actual fit problem. Prime was just another drink.

3. Equity ownership from day one. The whole point is to build an asset. If the artist is getting a licensing fee or a royalty on someone else's company, they're back in the endorsement model with extra steps. Real wealth comes from owning a meaningful stake in something that appreciates.

4. Brand infrastructure that can outlive the person. SpringHill can function without LeBron in the room. Rhode can function without Hailey posting every day. The business has to have its own team, its own systems, its own identity, even if it was sparked by a single person's vision. If the brand dies when the founder stops posting, it was never a brand.

5. A defined audience beyond "my fans." Fans are a launch mechanism, not a market. The brand has to resonate with people who may never listen to your music or watch your content. Fenty's customer base is far wider than Rihanna's fanbase. That's the goal.

The Gap in Latin Music

Here's where this gets interesting and where the biggest opportunity sits right now.

The Latin music industry has produced some of the most commercially dominant artists on the planet. Bad Bunny is worth an estimated $100 million with investments spanning basketball, restaurants, nightlife, and real estate. Maluma has moved into fragrance, fashion, and restaurants.

But nobody in Latin music has built a SpringHill. Nobody has built a Rhode. Nobody has created a multi-category creative studio entity that turns cultural influence into a diversified brand portfolio with real equity.

The infrastructure doesn't exist yet. And for the right artist, someone with the cultural reach, the aesthetic vision, and the willingness to build something that outlasts their music career, that gap is a billion-dollar opportunity.

The question isn't whether an artist should build a brand. That debate is over. The question is whether they're going to build it around themselves with real ownership, real product-market fit, and real infrastructure, or just keep putting their name beside someone else's.

The next wave of artist wealth won't come from streams, tours, or endorsements. It will come from equity. And the artists who understand that early will own the decade.

Studio 73 builds brand strategy, venture roadmaps, and creative direction for artists, companies, and founders operating across entertainment, luxury, and culture.