Pretty Packaging, Poor Strategy

Cover Design by Claire Abbo

Pretty Packaging, Poor Strategy

By: Aidan Lane

Influencer-to-founder is supposed to be the upgrade: you start with sponsored posts, then “level up” into being the CEO of your own brand. It looks powerful on Instagram, press shots, product flatlays, a new bio line that reads “Founder of…”. But when you zoom out on brands like Addison Rae’s ITEM Beauty, Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Swim and Kylie Baby, SKKN by Kim, Sprinter by Kylie, and the D’Amelios’ footwear line, a pattern starts to show. The cultural capital is there. The business backbone often isn’t

These brands don’t launch subtly. ITEM Beauty launched at Sephora in 2020, driven by Addison’s massive TikTok following and framed as a clean, fun Gen Z line. Selfless by Hyram came soon after, backed by his authority as the internet’s skincare explainer and sold exclusively at Sephora. On paper, this looks like the dream: an engaged audience, a major retail partner, and a story that makes sense. But within a few years, both brands were pulled from Sephora shelves, heavily discounted, and then wound down or moved elsewhere. The audience didn’t vanish overnight.

Kylie Swim tells a similar story, just louder. The drop looked flawless from afar: Kylie teasing neon one-pieces and tiny bikinis, sold at premium prices, framed as the next must-have “hot girl summer” uniform. Then people actually got their orders. TikTok and Twitter are filled with try-on videos describing paper-thin fabric, messy seams, and see-through material that made the suits basically unusable outside a photoshoot. Fans questioned why a billionaire-backed brand shipped something that felt cheaper than fast fashion. The trademark has since gone inactive, and Kylie never truly fixed or relaunched it. The problem wasn’t the launch; it was everything that should have come after.

Even SKKN by Kim shows how being famous doesn’t guarantee a smooth ride. Kim Kardashian built SKKN as a nine-step, ultra-luxe skincare system that can cost nearly $600 to buy in full, leaning on her image as someone obsessed with beauty routines. Reviews and commentary called out formulas that didn’t always justify the price, bulky “refill” packaging that didn’t feel as eco-forward as advertised, and a brand tone some people found more entitled than aspirational. Later, Coty reported a loss on its SKKN stake, suggesting the brand hasn’t hit the explosive numbers everyone expected. Again, the persona was airtight—who screams skincare more than Kim? But the actual value proposition, price, and practicality didn’t fully land with consumers.

​The fact that Kim and Kylie already have extremely prosperous, well-oiled machines in SKIMS and Kylie Cosmetics makes that particularly startling. Even though those businesses print money and control entire markets, they are still not “enough” to relieve the pressure to continuously introduce new products. Maintaining a single billion-dollar brand can appear nearly stagnant in a world where relevance is determined by what’s new. Kylie Skim, Kylie Baby, SKNN, and Sprinter are examples of new lines that feel less like necessities and more like proof of life—signals that they’re still growing, still working hard, and still building an empire that depends as much on press releases as on actual sales.

All of these “failed” businesses have something in common: their strategic support died off quickly. This is where the “portfolio question” comes in. You have to wonder how many of these launches are truly built to last versus built to look impressive. Starting a brand lets an influencer say, “I’m more than just content. I’m a business.” It adds a new dimension to their image, even if the company itself struggles behind the scenes. ITEM leaving Sephora becomes a footnote; Addison still gets to say she founded a beauty line and “reimagined” it, and Hyram’s Selfless can move from Sephora to Target, reframe the story, and keep going, even if the initial retail bet didn’t work out.

But for everyone else in the chain—employees, suppliers, customers—it’s not just an aesthetic move. There’s real cost in manufacturing inventory that ends up discounted, in launching big and then subtly shrinking, and in treating entire product lines like experimental brand extensions. Behind every “fun new venture” are factory workers rushing to meet unrealistic timelines, marketers scrambling to pivot when a line underperforms, and customer service teams dealing with complaints about products that were never given the resources to improve. When a brand declines, people suffer layoffs, unpaid invoices, or chaotic transitions to their next job. The influencer, however, gets another line on the résumé. The ecosystem absorbs the waste of labor, materials, and people’s energy that was poured into something never given a real chance to succeed.

Most influencer brands front-load all their energy into launch content. The marketing plan is basically, “I’ll post about it, my friends will post about it, and it’ll go viral.” For the first week, it works. There are unboxings, TikTok hauls, and reaction videos. But when that initial wave passes, there’s nothing underneath. No email strategy, no thoughtful rollouts, no slow build of trust. The founder gets busy with other projects, stops talking about the brand, and the audience takes the hint.

It’s also important to separate attention from trust. Attention is what gets you a click, a view, maybe a first purchase. Trust is what gets you a second. People bought Kylie Swim because they trusted Kylie’s taste and assumed she wouldn’t put her name on something flimsy. When the product arrived and didn’t match that expectation, the trust took a hit that no amount of pretty packaging could fix. SKKN leaned hard on Kim’s beauty history, but if consumers feel they’re paying more for her name than for her products, that trust erodes too.

The influencer brands that do work tend to be those where the persona is the door, not the whole house. They invest in teams who know operations, merchandising, and boring back-end stuff. They listen when customers complain, reformulate as needed, and don’t assume that a fan account guarantees a customer. They recognize that cultural capital, likes, followers, and virality are just one kind of value, and not even the most durable kind.

Pretty Packaging, Poor Strategy is a diagnosis. These brands mirror how our generation sometimes treats success: if it looks good, if people are talking about it, it must be working. But cultural capital built on aesthetics alone is fragile. The moment the product doesn’t hold up, or the founder stops posting, the whole thing can collapse.

The more interesting question isn’t “Why did these influencer brands fail?” It’s: what would they look like if they were built to be more than a portfolio flex? If the same energy that goes into moodboards and launch shoots went into long-term planning, maybe the FYP wouldn’t be littered with ghost brands and clearance racks. Maybe cultural capital could become something sturdier; less about momentary hype, more about real, sustained value.