A few months ago it became public knowledge that Dan Bilzerian’s company, Ignite, lost $50,000,000. I was slightly disappointed to find this out, as I gave the brand a shoutout in my last book as I thought they were successfully monetising Dan Bilzerian’s audience of frat bros and horny men.
To an extent, I wasn’t wrong, Ignite successfully managed make $9,600,000 in sales – however due to excessive amounts of “running costs”, the brand lost the massive $50,000,000 mentioned above.
So, why weren’t there more sales, and why has Ignite lost so much money?
As successful as Dan Bilzerian has been at growing an audience on Instagram, he’s not particularly good at using his social media to promote Ignite’s products.
If you browse through his recent social media posts and base Ignite’s products on his Instagram page, you’d probably think it was a bikini brand as they seem to be the only items featuring its branding. Aside from the many bikinis, the other Ignite product I can see is a branded vodka, which is unavailable on their website and I can’t seem to find it elsewhere either.
In fact, I don’t seem to see any photos of Ignite products on his profile this year (the date today is the 14th of September). This considered, it’s actually pretty impressive that Ignite sold $9,600,000.
Considering that their CBD vapes and skincare products are their most globally available products, you would think Dan would actively advertise these on his Instagram, but no.
So, yes, Ignite could be the goto brand for vaping fuckboys, but Dan doesn’t seem to be pushing for this.
Even Ignite International’s own Instagram page doesn’t really push their products. The only product posted this year was their canned vitamin drinks, but I’m not sure if this is available globally.
Sure, if you go into the Ignite CBD Instagram there’s promotional imagery, but this page has a much smaller following and shockingly bad engagement.
Ultimately Ignite is a lifestyle brand, but the lifestyle it is selling (Dan’s) doesn’t include using their products (the vape pen, the moisturisers, etc), so why would would the target audience buy those products?
If he did a better job at selling those products on his Instagram, the company’s sales would likely be much higher, but it’s unclear whether the additional revenue would have been able to cover the astronomical running costs of the company.
Why has Ignite lost so much money?
Well, firstly, because Dan Bilzerian isn’t a good match for CEO, and I’m baffled he was ever the company CEO.
Despite Dan having an Instagram audience of over 32,000,000 – giving Ignite the kind of reach that most companies have to pay huge sums to achieve – he managed to rack up a ridiculous amount of marketing and running costs.
Many others have covered the individual costs which Dan racked up using the company accounts (I personally recommend Coffeezilla’s video), so I won’t go into detail as it’s not really what this blog is about, but generally speaking a lot of silly items and a ridiculous amount on his famous parties which he counted as company expenses.
So, in conclusion, too much flash and not enough substance.
Realistically, if Dan actually promoted the products, Ignite would have probably sold a lot more than it did. Additionally, if Ignite hired a CEO qualified to manage a multi-national organisation, the running costs would have been much lower than Dan amounted, who seemed to think the company accounts were for his own personal use.
God knows why Dan wasn’t just appointed as “Creative Director and Founder” and given better focus.
However, what’s done is done, and Ignite will likely go down in history as a company that had a lot of potential, but not a lot of direction.
SIR THORNEY 