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The Daily Wire is now generating $22 million a year from selling its own products — everything from shaving razors to branded merchandise:

The Daily Wire launched its Jeremy's Razors brand in March 2022 after direct-to-consumer razor company Harry's Razors pulled its ads from the Daily Wire's "The Michael Knowles Show," citing "misaligned values." … In total, Jeremy's Razors products brought in more than $19 million in revenue for the Daily Wire in 2023, up from $10 million in 2022, executives told Axios. The remaining $3 million+ in total commerce revenue for the company came from the Daily Wire's merchandise store, which features an array of cheeky conservative goods, such as a "Leftist Tears" tumbler mug and a "Definition of a Woman" T-shirt.

What struck me when reading this is that The Daily Wire basically copy and pasted another company’s product and then slapped its own branding onto it. It’s not claiming that it’s invented a new kind of razor that shaves a man’s face any better than its competitors. It merely found a manufacturing partner, developed a brand logo, and then leveraged its massive distribution channels to drive sales.

This is a trend you see with other major product launches from media entrepreneurs:

• Feastables: Is there a product market more crowded than chocolate? This didn’t stop MrBeast from launching his own candy bar, and it’s now reportedly already generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year.

• Prime: YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul entered an energy drink market that was already dominated by the likes of Gatorade and Powerade, but they still quickly amassed over $250 million in sales just in their first year.

• Chamberlain Coffee: Again, it’s not likely people were lacking in coffee bean selection, but Emma Chamberlain’s company is now reportedly generating around $20 million in annual sales.

I think the key insight we’re seeing is that media entrepreneurs don’t need to reinvent the wheel when launching new products; they just need to offer a plausible alternative to the products consumers are always buying in droves. Nobody ever needs just one razor blade or one bar of chocolate or one bag of coffee beans, and so if you can find ways to leverage your brand and distribution channels to insert yourself into those purchase cycles, then it’s entirely reasonable to believe that you could build a profitable business.

This makes sense when you consider every major name brand that leads its product category. Does McDonald’s make the best cheeseburgers? Does Tylenol make the best pain killer? Does Colgate make the best toothpaste? In each of those categories, the product isn’t all that differentiated from the competition. There really are only two reasons that they’re able to capture so much market share. ...