Five Celebrity Brands, Hundreds of Millions of Followers, Still Shut Down
Modern Retail reported on August 25, 2026 that a wave of celebrity-led brands have shut down or been discontinued in the past two years, despite each founder having one of the largest audiences on the planet behind them. Lionel Messi's Mas+ drink line was discontinued less than two years after launch. Alex Cooper's Unwell drink was discontinued in under a year. Kim Kardashian's Skkn skincare line closed and was folded into Skims. Gwen Stefani's Gxve Beauty shut down in 2026. Drew Barrymore's Flower Beauty was discontinued.
You can read the full reporting at Modern Retail.
Attention Is Not the Same as Permission to Sell
A brand expert quoted in that reporting put it plainly: there is a big difference between having attention and having permission to enter a category. Messi has hundreds of millions of followers watching him play soccer. That does not mean those same people were waiting to buy a drink from him. Alex Cooper has one of the biggest podcasts in the world. That did not automatically mean her audience wanted her specific beverage on a store shelf next to a hundred other options.
Why Huge Audiences Did Not Save These Brands
None of these are stories about a lack of reach. Every one of these people could put a product in front of tens of millions of people instantly, for free, any time they wanted. That is the exact opposite of the problem most small businesses have. And it still was not enough.
An audience that follows someone for one reason, entertainment, sports, a podcast, does not automatically transfer into buyers for an unrelated product in a crowded category. Beauty and beverage are two of the most competitive retail categories that exist, full of brands built specifically to win in that category, not brands that showed up because the founder was already famous for something else.
The Lesson for a Small Business Without a Celebrity Following
This should be reassuring, not discouraging, if you run a local or service business without a huge social following. Followers and views were never the thing standing between these celebrities and a successful business. What actually decides whether a business survives is the same two things every time: an offer people genuinely want, and a system that follows up with the people who show interest until they become a customer.
A landscaping company with 200 Instagram followers and a fast callback system will out-earn a brand with a million followers and no real reason for people to buy. Attention gets someone to look. It does not get them to buy, and it definitely does not get them to buy twice. That second part, the follow-up and the retention, is where the actual business lives.
What This Means If You Are Building Instead of Just Posting
If you are spending time chasing views and follower counts instead of building the offer and the follow-up system underneath it, you are repeating the same mistake these brands made, just at a smaller scale. Views do not pay bills. Booked appointments and closed deals do. A voice agent that answers the phone the moment someone calls and a CRM that keeps following up matters more to your revenue than another viral post ever will.
Build the offer and the follow-up system that actually converts attention into customers at kenjiai.com/overview.