Today, Alix Earle is launching a skincare line—but if you’ve been looking close enough you probably knew it was coming. For the last year, the influencer has been dropping Easter eggs across her social feeds in the lead-up to her debut venture.
There were the vlogs from her dermatologist’s office. The un-get-ready-with-me posts featuring unnamed products in unbranded packaging. The puzzle-like billboard in NYC that popped up with missing pieces.
Now today, Earle is finally revealing Reale Actives, a skincare brand that Earle developed for acne-prone skin but is “designed for everyone” launching March 31.
Those who have been following Earle for years might say that the Easter eggs began at the beginning of her influencer journey. Early videos detail her experiences on the prescription medication Accutane, which she tried three separate times. “It was, by far, what resonated with people the most out of anything I had posted,” Earle tells Fast Company.
Since posting her first video in 2020, Earle has built a following in the millions. She has leveraged that following into a number of successful business ventures, investing in and partnering with prebiotic soda brand Poppi, which was later acquired by PepsiCo for $1.95 billion. She is also involved as an investor and partner in the canned cocktail brand SipMargs.
But Earle always knew she wanted to found her own brand; she just wasn’t sure what. Initially, she shut down the idea of a skincare brand. “I didn’t like skincare. I’d never had a good experience with it,” she says. But she was unable to ignore the fact that sharing her skin journey was at the core of her brand.
“I kept coming back to acne as the one topic I felt so strongly and passionately about,” says Earle. She noticed a gap in the market for dermatologist-backed products that embraced the messiness of real life and also came in cute packaging.
From there, she came up with the idea for Reale Actives, which includes a streamlined four-step skincare routine featuring a cleansing balm ($29), gel cleanser ($28), mandelic acid serum ($39) and a barrier-boosting moisturizer ($36).
It’s a crowded market. The success of influencer-founded brands like Rhode by Hailey Bieber and Summer Fridays, co-founded by Marianna Hewitt, has meant tapping an existing audience and launching a beauty brand has now become the gold standard.
“I don’t want to look to any other brand for comparison,” says Earle. “I want Real Actives to pave its own way and stand on its own.”
A marketing Easter egg hunt
After developing the products with guidance from her dermatologist Dr. Kiran Mian and bringing on Andrea Blieden as CEO in 2024, it was time to start seeding the products.
During her stint on Dancing With The Stars in 2025, Earle would post un-get-ready-with-me videos on TikTok. Blieden would trawl the comments, waiting for someone to ask which cleansing balm Earle was using to take off her heavy stage makeup. “I was sure people would ask about it,” Blieden says. “But she crushed her dance that week, and everyone just kept talking about her performance.”
By December 2025, they decided to ramp up the products’ visibility. Rather than relying on a content plan, they entrusted Earle free rein over what to post and when.
“There were times I’d be watching her TikTok and she’d tease our Mandelic Acid serum and I had no idea,” says Blieden. “She is so good at knowing what her audience wants and what her community responds to that she does it all on the fly.”
Earle has also subtly been introducing her audience to Dr. Mian, who first featured in a vlog back in 2024 and has since made regular appearances throughout her content.
“They just think she’s a dermatologist I see—they don’t know we’ve been working on this together behind the scenes,” Earle tells Fast Company. “They may be a little shocked when they find out.”
The fact that the product seeding has mostly flown under the radar for the past year is a testament to the creator-product-market fit. Skincare has been a content pillar since the beginning. Over the past year Earle has subtly been posting regular skin updates, talking through the routine that has been working with one glaring omission (the products).
Of course, there’s been some speculation in the comments section. “We actually hoped they’d start guessing skincare, because we wouldn’t want to launch something that completely surprised her audience,” Blieden says. “We wanted people bought into the journey before launch day.”
Over the past week the marketing has ramped up after a new Instagram account called @wtfisalixdoing appeared on Instagram. The account has 398,000 followers at the time of writing and a number of posts teasing the launch.
“Yesterday, a TikTok live—at times with over 500 people—was dedicated entirely to solving “WTF is Alex doing?” says Blieden. These armchair detectives somehow found the one thing Blieden most feared, the trademark filing under the stealth company name.
Despite the last-minute leak, Blieden was happy they were able to keep the news under wraps for as long as they have. Looking ahead, Reale Actives already has product launches planned through 2027 and Earle will continue taking her audience along for the journey – this time with their prior knowledge.
And for consumers to buy into the brand and the results, they only need to scroll back through Earle’s social media for a walking, talking product advertisement.
