"Everyone told us we were crazy to launch a premium vegan sweet brand," recalls creator Jamie Laing. Yet a decade after throwing out the confectionery rulebook, the social media star turned entrepreneur has proved the skeptics wrong. His company isn't just surviving - it's revolutionizing the candy market, outpacing industry giants while proving that creator-led businesses can deliver more than just flash-in-the-pan success.
"We didn't follow logic, we just followed our naivety," Laing reflects on the company's early days. "We did everything that every other sweet company wasn't doing. And because we were young and dumb in a way, we kind of made ourselves stand out in the crowd."
Laing's journey represents a great case study in leveraging personal brand into sustainable business success. As a content creator and TV star with a significant following, he recognized early on that his platform could serve as a powerful marketing tool. "Being from the entertainment industry meant that people were looking at what I was doing. And so I could market my company through my own channels, which was a brand new thing to do when we first started doing it."
The genesis of Candy Kittens came from an unusual combination of influences. "What inspired me was my love of confectionery," Laing shares. "When I was younger there's a candy bar in America called Dylan's candy bar, which was named after one of Ralph Lauren's daughters, Dylan Lauren... that was my inspiration, as well as Willie Wonka, one of my favorite movies, plus the fact that I was denied sweets as a kid because I had way too much ADHD."
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