Bieberchella is over, and it’s finally clocking to us. After Justin Bieber came off the stage on Saturday night, the internet was ablaze with clips of his Coachella comeback. The star performed his childhood hits that millennials like this one grew up on, riffed off his precious early days on YouTube, and for weekend two, brought Billie Eilish — a self-confessed Bieber superfan — on stage to serenade her to “One Less Lonely Girl”, as his wife Hailey, who pushed her on stage, looked on beaming.
The Biebers are standing on business.
The power couple oversee a two-pronged business empire, the extent of which was fully on display across both weekends of Coachella. Justin wore his brand Skylrk both weekends on one of the biggest stages in the world and sold $15 million in Coachella merch, smashing the previous two-weekend record of $1.7 million. The brand also hosted a Skylrk Oasis on the festival site, where users could enjoy cool mist while they relaxed or shopped, boosting merch sales and driving $2.3 million in MIV the first weekend. (Hailey and Kylie Jenner wearing the merch on Instagram in the run-up didn’t hurt, either). Rhode, which sold to Elf Beauty last year for $1 billion, set up a “Rhode World” experience away from the festival grounds, pulling in an orbit of influencers and fans. The brand drove $10 million in MIV over weekend one (weekend two data is still pending).
“The Biebers are a true unicorn pairing in the attention economy,” says Parisa Parmar, senior creative strategist at agency Attachment. “Justin brings something few talents can replicate, which is a lifelong audience. He’s grown up with his fans since his early teens, which creates a rare sense of emotional proximity. For many, he doesn’t just feel famous, he feels familiar,” she says. “As a duo, they represent a modern blueprint of aspirational partnership. Young, hyper-visible and creatively active, but still grounded in a dynamic that feels culturally relevant to a millennial and Gen Z audience navigating love, identity and ambition in public.”
There’s more branding magic when the two come together. In February of this year, Skylrk announced Hailey Bieber as its first campaign star, with a capsule collectsion co-created by the couple, generating $520,000 in MIV in one week, per Launchmetrics. Ahead of Coachella, the Biebers collaborated on Rhode acne patches called “Spotwear”. With a jellybean color palette, a new wavy Rhode logo, and shapes like mushrooms and beans, the stickers were aligned with Justin’s Skylrk aesthetic, forming a bridge between the two labels and the Biebers ahead of their biggest weekend in the public eye since their wedding in 2018.
When Rhode “Spotwear” was first announced on April 5, conversations around it generated $7.3 million in MIV in one week, according to Launchmetrics, which attaches monetary value to social media engagements. The top post for the period, a carousel of selfies of the couple, generated $1.6 million. After its launch on April 13, the collaboration generated $1.9 million in MIV after one week. The top post for the period generated $365,000.
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Skylrk and Rhode have brand identities that are becoming synonymous with the Biebers as a duo, including shared color palettes and shapes. “Rhode and Skylrk are winning because they’ve built a repeatable playbook, which consists of designing for attention, engineering for virality and validating through real behavior,” Parmar says. “First, the product is doing the heavy lifting. Both brands are designed to stand out in a saturated feed. Chubby shapes, textured finishes, playful naming. It’s a deliberate aesthetic that invites interaction amongst Gen Z and millennial audiences, whether that’s in your handbag or on your camera roll.”
Despite Coachella being the first time the couple has so explicitly turned their relationship into a marketing ploy, the pair have been acutely aware of the commercial impact of their marriage for years, with Justin appearing at Rhode events and Hailey a frequent presence at his performances, says Annie Corser, senior trends editor for pop culture and media at Stylus. “However, what they have maintained until recently is an awareness of the distinction between their fan bases and frameworks of appeal.”
“Justin offers millennial staying power, and while he may have moved on musically, his appeal is mixed up with nostalgia for the Americana of the 2010s. Hailey, a zillennial, gives Justin some Gen Z credibility, and while her girl-boss energy might feel outdated affixed to another celebrity, she has tuned the tone of her ambition so it feels a natural fit for the TikTok/Instagram/podcast media pipeline and cultural discourse younger fans deal in,” Corser adds. “That creates a broad, solid market segment for them to appeal to. Together, they occupy a position in pop culture that feels both familiar and able to refresh, allowing them to build distinct identities within the known quantity of their relationship.”
Owning controversy
It’s not always been rosy for the Biebers. Justin, as widely documented by the press, has experienced many ups and downs in the court of public opinion, as he grappled with superstardom in his teens and early twenties, and like many stars was goaded and placed under intense pressure from the paparazzi. In 2022, he canceled his Purpose tour, citing personal reasons, which later, in his YouTube Originals documentary Justin Bieber: Seasons, were revealed to be addiction and mental health struggles. Hailey also became a polarizing figure when the two got married, as some Bieber fans opposed their coupling in the wake of his former relationship with Selena Gomez.
Bieber ran into controversy again last year, when an argument with a paparazzo at the beach went viral online, in the now famous “it’s not clocking to you” rant. But the Biebers understand how to subvert a narrative. Justin featured the tirade on his album Swag, while Hailey continually made quips referencing the outburst once the album was released (“Is it clocking to you yet?” she wrote on Instagram). They then used the slogan on Coachella merch, emblazoned across T-shirts. Justin even played the clip on stage and lip synced along, receiving laughs from the audience.
It’s this approach, creating in-jokes with the fans, and acknowledging their haters, that is only serving to boost the Biebers’ star power.
This manifests in the Biebers’ often incongruous couples dressing. In a now infamous appearance in New York while promoting Rhode, Hailey stepped out in a strapless red silk mini dress and stilettos, with Justin by her side in oversized gray sweats and Crocs. The look went viral, and inspired scores of Halloween outfits that October, noted Eileen Cartter, style editor at GQ, who has reported extensively on the Biebers’ style, and asked Hailey about their opposing style in an interview in 2023.
“She knew this was something people had been talking about. It’s such a good visual gag, which people love and does really well on social media, and it’s also something that I do think they are at least a little bit cheeky about,” Cartter says. For example, she notes, when they went to the Grammys together in 2022, Hailey wore a slip of a Saint Laurent dress, and Justin sported a hot pink beanie and a Balenciaga suit, again with Crocs. “But Karla Welch, JB’s longtime stylist, styled them both, so it’s almost certainly a little intentional. Each look was true to each person, but the contrast is also really funny, which makes the whole thing all the more compelling.”
Expanding the Bieber bubble
Outside of their own brands, Justin and Hailey also have deep commercial impact for any label they touch today.
That was on display on the Coachella stage, where Justin wore a pair of denim shorts by the designer Lu’u Dan on weekend one, paired with Loewe Bobby boots and his Skylrk hoodie. It drove $234,000 in MIV for Loewe, and shot Lu’u Dan to new levels of exposure. “To see [Justin] choose Lu'u Dan as part of that performance was incredibly meaningful for us,” says brand founder Hung La. “It hit instantly.” The Black Coated Puffa Shorts sold out within 24 hours, and the brand saw 1,200% increase in site sessions week-over-week. Instagram impressions also rose by approximately 300%, La shares. “This was one of the strongest spikes the brand has experienced, comparable only to when Billie Eilish wore our L-D Windbreaker during a Met Gala afterparty.”
It’s important brands respond quickly to these pop culture peaks. Lu’u Dan moved quickly to open pre-orders for the shorts in response to demand. Between pre-orders, re-orders from retail partners, and his DTC site restocking, La is expecting to move an additional 150 units beyond the initial sell-out, which is significant for a brand at that scale.
Hailey also made headlines for her laid-back Coachella outfits, combining luxury brands like Ann Demeulemeester and vintage Dior with affordable basics from labels like Los Angeles Apparel or rising athleisure brand CSB, which she wore on weekend one walking around the festival with Kendall Jenner.
“We saw an immediate and measurable impact when Hailey was seen wearing the Form Leisure Tank,” says CSB founder Rachel Dillon. Visits to the product page increased by 277%, alongside an 89% uplift in sales, signaling strong and immediate customer intent, she adds, and on CSB’s socials, a post featuring Hailey generated over 1.2 million impressions on Instagram.
“What’s been most interesting is the quality of that engagement. It wasn’t just a short-term spike, we saw deeper exploration across the site and continued interest beyond the initial moment, indicating genuine brand discovery rather than purely reactive traffic,” Dillon adds. “Our response is focused on sustaining that momentum. We’re continuing to build consistent storytelling around both the product and the broader brand, ensuring new customers understand what CSB stands for beyond a single moment.”
Hailey, who started her career as a model, is more deliberate in the brand campaigns she chooses to appear in now, meaning the impact is higher when she does lend her face. Recent DKNY and Saint Laurent campaigns she did drove significant buzz for the labels. Conversations around DKNY’s spring campaign featuring Hailey Bieber generated $1.8 million in MIV in the first week after its launch on February 10, with the top post for the period alone earning $773,000, per Launchmetrics. Conversations around the Saint Laurent campaign generated $1.3 million in MIV in the first week after its launch on April 13. The top post for the period garnered $179,000.
“The Biebers are a good example of how celebrity value has evolved beyond endorsement, with celebrity power translating directly into brand performance, not just for brands they own, but for every brand in their orbit. What makes them distinct is the compounding effect of being founder, muse, campaign star, and red carpet fixture all at once, which is why brands from Dior to DKNY to Saint Laurent are building moments around them. The most powerful celebrity relationships today are the ones built across multiple touchpoints rather than single transactions, and the Biebers are setting the benchmark for what that looks like.”
Across their own brands and brand partners, the Biebers understand that organic growth is their biggest advantage, allowing the power of their premium personal brands to do a significant amount of the heavy lifting, says Corser.
“Coachella saw [them create] something akin to a Bieber ‘brand world’, turning what could have felt like over-exposure into a deliberate, unapologetic takeover that straddled both sides of the festival — brand activations and music acts, BTS content about being a family alongside pop-up activations and product drops,” says Corser. “For a couple who aren’t shy about declaring their love — or irritation — at each other on social media, cross-promotion of each other’s brands at an event like Coachella felt like an extension of the parasocial access they capitalise on. It felt light, knowing, and unfussy, but the business acumen was never far away.”
As Justin closed his Coachella weekend two set, fans went into overdrive, as he said “See y’all soon”, which the internet is taking to mean he’s going on tour — though nothing’s yet been announced. From Rhode to Skylrk to a potential tour, Bieberchella may be over, but the Bieber empire lives on.
Justin Bieber’s Skylrk Sales Hit $15 Million, Smashing Coachella Merch Records
Coachella’s Big Brand Renaissance
“I Would Love to Be Everywhere”: Hailey Bieber’s Rhode-Map to Expansion
