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Made By Gather’s formula for finding the best celebrity partner

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Celebrity-led brands have become one of the biggest trends. But it’s not enough to simply have a big name associated with a company — the person actually has to be involved.

That’s what has helped Made By Gather be such a success. Made By Gather is the parent company of Beautiful, Drew Barrymore’s homewares company. Now, Made By Gather is relaunching another brand, Bella, alongside Demi Lovato.

Made By Gather has been around since 2003, but only in the last decade has it begun really focusing on branding and high-profile partnerships. In 2010, “we got some really good advice that in order to really maximize the value of the business, you should think about launching your own brands and kind of control your own destiny,” said founder and CEO Shae Hong.

Hong joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about the necessary elements of brand building and why Made By Gather believes there needs to be what he calls a “human at the helm.”

Before, Made By Gather made home products that sold in major stores like Target and Walmart, but there was no cohesive brand or story behind it. Beginning in 2011, the company realized it needed to have more elements than just good products.

Now, companies don’t only require having a cohesive brand — they also need someone leading the narrative. Part of Made By Gather’s focus has been finding the right partners to do this.

After years of working in the home goods space and seeking out top-tier partnerships, Hong says he’s figured out the formula for finding the best celebrity collaboration. “Really, it is trying to read whether somebody is genuinely interested in the category,” he said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

When the company began focusing on building brands
“The first [big aha moment] came in 2010. We had built, actually, a really big business — we were doing a ton of business, selling to everybody: Walmart, Target, the club channels, all the department stores and specialty stores. But it was a bunch of items. So it was kind of like we were creating items, and we were selling them. And we got some really good advice that in order to really maximize the value of the business, you should think about launching your own brands and kind of control your own destiny. So, we made a big pivot in 2011, and we launched Bella. That was the first brand that we had created from scratch.”

Why Made By Gather sees high profile partnerships as key to success
“The second [major business change] was really the strategy to create what we call a human at the helm brand that would connect emotionally with consumers. And that was really what was most important about building Beautiful. At the time, we came up with a strategy as a team. We didn’t know that it was going to be Drew [Barrymore]. We knew that it was going to be somebody, and we were out looking for the right partner. And the strategy behind that was really about a platform, to be able to give voice to a brand and to product — to be able to give it a personality. That’s why we love the word human at the helm. There’s a human at the helm. The human is not the brand, but they are behind it. They’re behind why it exists; they’re able to talk about how it connects to them authentically and why they created it. So that was a real transformation for Made By Gather. And it started a transformation for us of how we looked [at] our future and our brands.”

How Hong chooses which celebrities to work with
“It’s a little bit of our secret sauce. Part of it has to do with me getting to know who we’re going to work with. And really, it is trying to read whether somebody is genuinely interested in the category. And we’ve had experiences work both ways in the past… We did partnerships where we thought there was genuine interest, and you get down the road, and it’s kind of an afterthought. And so what I really try to lean into in our team to look for in a partner is somebody whose engagement level is more than expected. And it’s not that they only show up when they show up for a meeting. It’s all that in-between time where you’re getting feedback, you’re getting comments, you’re getting like ideas. Or, you have a meeting and you realize, since the last time you met, she’s made a ton of notes of new things she wanted to go over. It’s really that engagement and that passion that I think is part of what makes it work.”