The last time I saw Alix Earle in New York in late 2025, she was in stealth mode ahead of the launch of her brand Reale Actives. She had been testing and teasing her products for months, but didn’t know for sure how the launch would go with her fans. She was excited—but still nervous.
It ended up going gangbusters. The brand hit $5 million in sales on its first day and sold out by 4 p.m. Eighty percent of sales have been the brand’s full routine kit. So when I had the chance to reconnect with Earle in late July, I wanted to hear about what it’s been like since.
“It’s been very exciting to have it out there and to have people really using and loving the products,” she told me under soft green lighting inside a Reale Actives installation in midtown. She was sitting next to Kiran Mian, the dermatologist who works on the brand.
The mega-influencer with about 15 million followers across TikTok and Instagram was previewing Reale Actives’ latest product, a serum called Go Calm that drops next week. It’s the first new product since the brand’s initial launch.
It’s launching during a big month for Earle; her Netflix reality show Earle Meets World premiered a few weeks ago. The show follows Earle’s personal life, her beef with Alex Cooper, and her dad and sister’s careers working alongside her as manager and fellow influencer. Netflix cameras came along to Reale Actives’ launch day. It’s essentially a next-gen Keeping Up With the Kardashians, complete with younger half-siblings who bring some comic relief. The show attracted 1.8 million viewers (enough to squeeze into the top 10) in its first week and grew its audience via social media buzz into week two, per Deadline.
Watching Earle Meets World, we see inside the day-to-day life of one of the world’s biggest social media stars. Influencing, for all its glamor, can be a solitary job—just you, your managers, and millions of people on the other side of their phones. Building Reale Actives has added a new dimension to her work, she told me.
“I think it’s given me a new sense of fulfillment and excitement,” she says. “A lot of the times I feel like I end up doing things more or less alone on the ‘Alix Earle’ side of things, and to be able to just have such a great team around me has been really, really amazing.”
After working as talent for some of the world’s largest brands (she’s been in two Super Bowl commercials), she has opinions about what works and what doesn’t. (You can read our Q&A from earlier this year for more of her perspective.) For Reale Actives, she’s made sure to hire outgoing photographers who can bring her out of her shell. She insists on a flexible but efficient schedule that maximizes content opportunities—turning a shot into not just a campaign, but 10 other social media posts.
“It’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve done in my career,” she says. “I’m excited to just keep challenging myself.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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