Cameron Dallas is driving to a butterfly museum in Los Angeles, a family outing where he might snap some content with his niece and nephew. But besides documenting family memories, his days in front of the camera are numbered.
"I don't see myself posting TikToks for much longer," said Dallas, who launched into social-media fame with a Vine account at 17 and is now 28. "I'm going to be in my thirties here pretty soon, and I want to focus on the creator economy behind the scenes."
In 2016, Dallas founded a VC fund with Jake Paul and the investor Patrick Finnegan called TGZ Capital (which stands for Team Gen Z), which took stakes in avatar company Genies and toothbrush maker Quip. But now, he's announcing arguably his biggest business play yet: Fanfix, an 11-month-old creator platform he co-owns, has been acquired by the beauty accelerator SuperOrdinary.
The acquisition pricetag was eight figures, both parties said, but declined to disclose specifics.
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Fanfix lets fans pay for exclusive content and DMs from the likes of Dallas, Madi Monroe, and Anna Shumate. Creators choose their own pricing and the platform takes a 20% cut off all transactions – the same share as OnlyFans.
Fanfix has 1,000 creators and 140,000 paying subscribers, with top earners like Dallas on track to bank six figures annually, said cofounders Harry Gestetner and Simon Pompan.
The two best friends founded Fanfix in college and brought Dallas onboard to help recruit creators one month after launch. Prior to the acquisition, the company had raised $1.3 million in venture funding.
Dallas, a former teen heartthrob with stints in modeling and music, who has also been open about his sobriety journey, said FanFix's appeal lies in letting creators vend family-friendly content.
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"Creators want that subscription revenue from OnlyFans and Patreon," he said.
"But they don't want to be associated with p*rn and damaging their brand," he continued, referencing OnlyFans' popularity with adult content creators.
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Gestetner added that Fanfix's key point of differentiation from Patreon is that it was built by and for Gen Z, with a focus on building up an arsenal of TikTokers.
A different vision for social shopping in the US
SuperOrdinary's primary business is beauty, but it leans heavily on influencers.
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The company launched four years ago to help beauty brands like Olaplex, Physicians Formula, and Malin+Goetz break into the lucrative but highly regulated Chinese market.
In 2021, the company expanded its focus two more markets: the US (on Amazon) and Southeast Asia. It also grew from 23 to roughly 140 brands, and began pushing into other categories like pet food (Cesar) and fashion (North Face owner VF Corporation).
Since its inception, embracing influencers – namely the streamers fueling China's social commerce frenzy – has been key. Fanfix is SuperOrdinary's first acquisition in the creator space, said cofounder and CEO Julian Reis, an investor and entrepreneur.
"We've been very patient in our timing with social commerce in the US market," Reis said, "and Fanfix is going to be core to our strategy."
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To date, SuperOrdinary has worked with 70,000 KOLs (or key opinion leaders, as influencers are called in China) to help seed brands there. It brokers deals with local agencies called MCNs, said Reis, and pays influencers commissions for sales transacted during live streams on platforms like Taobao, Tmall, and WeChat.
With FanFix, it's not looking to replicate this model stateside.
Instead, in the next six to 12 months, SuperOrdinary plans to start launching product collaborations with Fanfix creators. If there's excess inventory from skin care brand Farmacy, for instance, Dallas could launch a white labeled or co-branded moisturizer.
Luxury beauty products have particularly high margins, Pompan said, and Fanfix could use the internal data it has for creators to unearth potential collaborations.
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Creators will sell products in their own online storefronts, with SuperOrdinary handling transactions and shipping on the back end. In addition to collaborations, creators could also vend other SuperOrdinary products in their stores if it's synergistic, Reis said.
Another component of the acquisition will see Fanfix onboarding more global creators, with an initial focus on China and Southeast Asia. This could help SuperOrdinary "disintermediate" its relationships with Chinese MCNs and build its own influencer contingency in Asia, Reis said.
All told, SuperOrdinary has 700 employees, and projected revenues of $180 million in 2021, according to Forbes. Fanfix had seven employees prior to the acquisition; Gestetner and Pompan said they're currently hiring.
SuperOrdinary has acquired one other beauty brand to date, Joanna Vargas. It holds minority stakes in some brand of its partners, and for others operates exclusive distribution agreements where it purchases products at wholesale to resell.
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The company declined to disclose how much funding it has raised to date.
