Young Entrepreneurs: Zoe Sugg, Zoella

Name: Zoe Sugg
Age: 24
Company: Zoella Ltd
Website:  www.youtube.com/user/zoella and www.zoella.co.uk

Zoe Sugg, known to her fans as Zoella, is the rising star of YouTube whose rapid success with her fashion and lifestyle vlog has marked out both a new breed of celebrity and generation of entrepreneur.

Having created her fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog “Zoella” in February 2009, by the end of the year she had amassed thousands of followers and made the decision to expand the blog into a YouTube channel while working at New Look.

Fast forward five years and it would be a severe understatement to say that this decision paid off – the 24 year-old’s YouTube channel now has over 7.5 million subscribers and her second channel MoreZoella has more than 2.8 million subscribers and growing. She also has an active Twitter following with over three million fans who often share tweets of their “love” for Zoella.

And it’s not just vlogging and blogging that Sugg has conquered at a young age. In September 2014 she launched her own-brand bath and beauty range Zoella Beauty which is stocked in major retailers including Superdrug and Boots and has had monumental success with her debut novel Girl Online. Part of a two-book-deal with Penguin, the fictional novel about a 15-year-old blogger broke records as the fastest selling book of 2014 and impressively achieved the highest first week sales for a debut author since Nielsen began compiling records in 1998.

With Companies House figures reporting revenue of almost £400,000 for Zoe Sugg Ltd 2014 and having just purchased a £1m house in Brighton, Sugg appears to have successfully commercialised a growing community which shows no signs of abating.

The success of fellow young entrepreneurs in Sugg’s circle; partner Alfie Deyes (PointlessBlog), her younger brother Joe Sugg and best friend Tanya Burr who have a combined YouTube following of almost nine million, also demonstrate the rising demand for viral videos and blogs with sponsors and advertisers competing to appear on their channels.

Named in the 2015 Debrett’s 500 as one of the most influential people in Britain, Sugg’s brand appears to be an unstoppable force and we can’t wait to see what the young female internet sensation has up her sleeve next.