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Top Of The Mornin’ has hired Small World to help it ‘decouple’ from its YouTuber founder and grow as a business.
A famous name can be an enormous asset to an early-stage brand. It’s unlikely that Aviation American Gin would have sold to Diageo for hundreds of millions of dollars without its connection to Ryan Reynolds, or that energy drink Prime would have been able to empty shelves without its associations with KSI and Logan Paul.
What happens, though, when the time comes to move on? That’s the task facing Hugh Thomas, chief executive at Top Of The Mornin’ coffee. Established in 2020 by YouTuber and streamer Seán McLoughlin, who is known as Jacksepticeye, the business has gained a foothold in the market as a DTC brand offering coffee, specialty teas, hot chocolate and merchandise.
Key to its success so far has been an ability to convert the coffee-obsessed creator’s younger fans – intimidated by third-wave coffee joints or turned off by the mainstream positioning of Starbucks – into early-stage java connoisseurs.
“If you are a young teenager getting into coffee for the first time, the world of specialty coffee can seem quite snooty and unapproachable,” says Thomas. “We wanted to create an approachable brand that was modern, relevant and something you could dip your toe into.”
He hopes that’s just the beginning and is aiming to wean the brand off its famous founder as it scales.
Beyond the creator
“The initial launch, before I joined the business, was incredibly successful,” Thomas explains, especially given that it was operating with a marketing budget of “almost zero”. But the team had always hoped it could grow beyond Jacksepticye. Thomas, who has been in the job for less than a year, is now working to make that a reality. “With the foundation set, we can really see this thing start to grow quickly.”
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