Life · Health · Asia-built

Everyone can hire a celebrity. im8 proves the celebrity is the cheap part — and that an Asia-built consumer brand can go from zero to $100M in a single year by doing the expensive thing instead: the science.

The setup

im8 is an all-in-one daily supplement — one sachet, 90+ clinically dosed ingredients, engineered to replace an entire shelf of pills with a single drink. It launched in late 2024 and, within its first year, crossed $100M+ in annualized revenue, running around $10 million a month. That makes it one of the fastest-growing supplement brands on record, in a global market worth roughly $400 billion.

The founder story that matters

Yes, David Beckham is a co-founder, and 88 million Instagram followers are not nothing. But the more instructive name is the other co-founder: Danny Yeung, the Hong Kong entrepreneur behind Prenetics (NASDAQ: PRE), who actually built the company. This is a Hong Kong-founded, globally-scaled consumer health brand — and that matters for how this room thinks about where the next great consumer companies come from.

The decisive move was a choice about what not to lean on. In a category where celebrity supplements are a punchline and skepticism is the default, Yeung and Beckham agreed from day one that fame would open the door, but science would have to keep people in the room.

How they actually did it

They over-invested in credibility, exactly where competitors cut corners:

• An 11-person scientific advisory board drawn from Mayo Clinic, NASA, and Yale.

• A real 12-week randomized controlled trial on the flagship product — measuring biological markers, not just vibes.

• Third-party testing and NSF Certified for Sport status, the standard elite athletes require.

That credibility became the marketing. When the world's No. 1 tennis player joins as an investor-ambassador after actually using the product, the story tells itself — and it's a story about efficacy, not just endorsement. Distribution was DTC-first, which kept the customer relationship and the data in-house and let them scale into 40-plus countries fast.

The investable insight

Two things. First, in low-trust categories — supplements, wellness, anything with a history of overclaiming — credibility is the moat. The clinical trial everyone else skips is exactly what lets you charge a premium and build repeat purchase. Second, and this is the Pavilion thesis in a single company: a consumer brand built out of Hong Kong went toe-to-toe at the top of a global market and won its first year. Asia isn't only where these products get manufactured. It's where they get founded.

For the room

• Celebrity is discovery, not a business. A famous face buys attention on day one. Product and proof convert attention into a company. Don't confuse the two.

• Credibility is a moat in low-trust categories. Do the clinical work, get the certifications, run the trial. The expensive, boring thing is the defensible thing.

• Asia builds global consumer. im8 is a Hong Kong-founded brand winning at the top of a $400B market. That's the pattern this room exists to back.

The takeaway: Fame opens the door exactly once. im8 bet that science, not celebrity, is what keeps people coming back — and did $100M in year one proving it. The lesson isn't "get a Beckham." It's "earn the trust nobody else bothers to earn."

Sources

• Prenetics / GlobeNewswire — IM8 launches Daily Ultimate Longevity (revenue trajectory, ~$600K → $6.6M/month, customers, servings)

• BeautyMatter — David Beckham–backed IM8 off to a $108M first-year start (advisory board, clinical trial, countries)

• Entrepreneur — David Beckham's supplement brand is doing $10M a month

• South China Morning Post — Danny Yeung and David Beckham's IM8 (Hong Kong / Prenetics background)