Why Celebrity-Founded Brands Keep Shutting Down

This summer, on the eve of the World Cup, just as footballer Lionel Messi was once again commanding global attention, his hydration drink Mas+ shut down — not even two years after its launch. A few months later, blogger and podcaster Alex Cooper announced a similar decision for her functional-beverage brand Unwell: the line of electrolyte, energy and protein drinks will close entirely this fall, right after a run of new Halloween-themed flavors hits shelves.

Brands like these, whose success once seemed all but guaranteed thanks to a celebrity's built-in audience, are now facing a harsh reckoning in a saturated market where consumers are showing real fatigue. The shutdowns of Mas+ and Unwell laid bare a stark disconnect between mass demand and the economics of the influencer business. A famous name buys the recognition that drives a first-time purchase, but it doesn't automatically deliver the consumer trust needed to win in fiercely competitive categories like beverages or beauty. Once the initial buzz fades, these brands learn the hard way that retail is a fast-turnover business — no number of social media followers can make up for a poor product-market fit or a lack of operational discipline over the long haul.

In recent years, the list of failed startups has grown even among the biggest stars. Kim Kardashian is no exception: after several attempts to pivot, her skincare brand Skkn quietly shut down in 2025, with its products folded into Skims. Earlier this year, singer Gwen Stefani's Gxve Beauty also ceased operations — following the closure of Drew Barrymore's Flower Beauty a year earlier.

Mas+ was originally pitched as a healthier alternative for athletes to Logan Paul's Prime. Launched in partnership with Mark Anthony Group, the parent company of White Claw, the brand secured strong distribution within its first year. But despite the early buzz and wide retail presence, Mas+ couldn't sustain long-term sales in a saturated category. According to Sunny Bonnell, founder and CEO of the branding agency Motto, the core problem facing today's celebrity-built brands — especially in overcrowded product categories — is a lack of clear positioning. Consumer analytics firm Tastewise reports that the functional-beverage market is growing more than 29% a year in 2026, and trade outlet The New Consumer noted that, as of May 2026, dozens of new beverage companies and products had entered the US market.

Bonnell noted that Alex Cooper has built enormous cultural capital and a massive following around her voice and point of view, but that doesn't automatically mean her audience wants to buy drinks from her. "There's a big difference between having attention and having permission to enter a category," she said. Bonnell also pointed out that Mas+ was further hampered by a lawsuit Prime filed against it last year — the claim that Messi's brand had hurt Prime's sales saddled Mas+ with stigma and diverted attention away from the product itself.

Mark Gallo, a beverage sales and distribution manager who has worked at Anheuser-Busch and Heineken, agrees that a celebrity's fan army is only a recognition asset. "But retail is a fast-turnover business, and that's a completely different currency," Gallo says. He explains that a famous name helps drive the first purchase, but taste, performance and price determine the second one. "Most celebrity brands tend to be pricier, me-too formulas, so there's no repeat purchase," he says. Gallo even considers the absence of a celebrity or influencer figure an advantage: founders who handle the real operational work themselves — meeting with distributors and retailers, creating content for the brand — end up with the edge.

Notably, both Mas+ and Unwell launched not through the traditional founder-led startup model but in partnership with major beverage companies — Unwell debuted in late 2025 as a joint venture with the multinational CPG giant Nestle. According to Bonnell, these high-profile cases confirm once again that celebrity brands built on a ready-made formula can't survive without the right product-market fit and a solid execution plan. The fact that Messi's name — backed by 516 million followers on Instagram alone — wasn't enough to build a loyal customer base for a nationwide beverage brand shows that these brands can look, on paper, as if they have everything needed for commercial success, yet convincing a consumer to actually buy the product takes far more than a famous name.