Hi,

The latest developments in the consumer space make one thing clear: creator-led brands are no longer niche experiments or simple commercial operations, they’ve become priority acquisition targets and strategic investments for global groups and established industry players.

But not all creator brands are acquisition-worthy. To attract serious buyers for their brands, creators must be able to turn influence into scalable financial performance.

In today’s newsletter, we outline three traits we consistently see in acquisition-ready brands. For founders the takeaway is clear: with the right foundations, creators can turn their influence into $1B+ monetization opportunities, far beyond what would be possible from sponsorships or content alone.

When a brand feels like a natural extension of its founder’s personality, values, and aesthetic, it creates authenticity competitors can’t replicate. That creator–product fit drives cultural relevance, while design, messaging, and product experience reinforce the story at every touchpoint. This alignment unlocks pricing power, loyalty, and media attention that acquirers quickly recognize as strategic value.

Hailey Bieber’s Rhode is a case in point.

Rhode wasn’t just a celebrity skincare line, it became the face of the “clean girl” aesthetic, a movement Hailey embodied through her own personal routine. With clear positioning, minimalist branding, and products she actually used daily, Rhode scaled rapidly to strong DTC revenues. The resonance was so powerful that earlier this year, e.l.f. Beauty acquired Rhode for $1B at a premium multiple (reportedly around 5x revenue). e.l.f. Beauty wasn’t just buying formulas, it was buying cultural capital, a community in motion, and a brand that had sparked an entire aesthetic trend.

Our Insight: If your brand is strong enough to create or define a movement, someone will pay to acquire it. Authenticity plus cultural resonance doesn’t just sell products. It builds acquirable equity.

What makes creator-led brands powerful is the trust between founder and community. That trust fuels immediate demand: fans rush to buy new drops within 24–72 hours. While this initial surge is common in creator brands, sustaining it over time signals true durability. When products deliver on their promise, early hype converts into repeat purchases of hero SKUs that extend lifetime value (LTV) and prove the brand can scale beyond one-off excitement. Rapid sell-through, high reorder rates, and successful category expansion then reinforce that traction is not just fleeting buzz, but the foundation for long-term growth.

Take Kylie Cosmetics for example.

Kylie Jenner’s first product (the Lip Kit) created enormous hype, selling out within minutes. Customers who tried it loved it, and each restock sparked another rush to buy. Over time, the Lip Kit became a hero SKU that anchored the brand’s growth and drove long-term customer value (LTV). This success provided the wedge to build a full cosmetics line and expand into adjacent categories.

In 2019, Coty acquired a 51% stake in Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million, valuing the brand at $1.2 billion, about a 6× revenue multiple on ~$177 million in sales. The deal was designed to accelerate Coty’s entry into the fast-growing prestige beauty segment, expand distribution internationally, and capture brand equity, while also unlocking access to Kylie’s 400M+ followers (75% aged 18–34). Although momentum slowed as COVID-19 disrupted retail activity, the acquisition still provided Coty with long-term strategic access to younger consumers, while allowing Kylie to lock in an exceptional ROI.

Our Insight: Engaged and reactive audiences are compounding assets, they lower launch costs, accelerate adoption, and de-risk growth. But audience trust alone isn’t enough; it must be paired with exceptional products that can become hero SKUs, anchoring growth and creating the foundation for expansion into new categories and markets.

First-party channels such as DTC websites, email, SMS, and subscriptions give brands direct ownership of customer relationships, margins, and data. This ownership enables more accurate forecasting and more efficient marketing spend. Building a robust DTC foundation provides brands with rich insights into customer behavior and loyalty, which can later be leveraged to expand into traditional retail channels.

Celsius acquired Alani Nu for $1.8B, attracted by its strong first-party data, deeply engaged customers, and clear strategy for scaling growth across broader distribution channels.

Alani Nu, launched in 2018 by fitness influencer Katy Hearn, first gained traction through direct-to-consumer online sales before expanding into major U.S. retailers in 2020, including Target and The Vitamin Shoppe (both online and in-store). The brand scaled into a $600M business in just 4 years, showcasing how digitally native, influencer-led brands can break into mainstream retail and drive category growth. Following its acquisition by Celsius earlier this year, Alani Nu’s annual revenues have surpassed $1B, with Celsius’s global distribution network and retail relationships accelerating its expansion.

Our Insight: Beyond unlocking a new consumer base, Alani Nu delivered a proven retail growth story and created incremental runway for Celsius’s core portfolio. For acquirers, this profile is especially attractive because it combines complementary audiences, incremental retail leverage, and data-validated loyalty that signals sustainable growth.

With M&A activity rebounding, consumer deal momentum is building again and creator-led brands are well positioned to drive the next wave of exits.

To be truly “exit-ready,” creator brands must demonstrate some, if not all, of three core attributes:

The strongest brands rarely grow in a straight line. Instead, they build compounding momentum through a self-reinforcing flywheel: cultural relevance sparks trial, hero products drive repeat loyalty, and first-party data plus channel expansion opportunities unlock scalable growth.

At Vivaio we work on building scalable brands that can become market leaders by building with these attributes in mind. By pairing cultural momentum with operational discipline, supply chain excellence, and global scaling infrastructure, we ensure that brands don’t just launch with influence, but scale with the credibility acquirers actively pursue.

P.S. - Check out our additional Learnings & Insights here.