How a Massive Social Media Following Helped (Nondigital) Toy Flo-Magic Break Into Big Retail

Why it matters:

• Justin Flom, Founder of Flo-Magic, is part of a growing trend of viral content creators who’ve launched their own brand in recent years after building up a massive following.
• Some 49% of customers make daily, weekly, or monthly purchases because of influencer posts, according to a recent influencer marketing report.
• The pandemic sparked a renewed interest in nondigital toys, which business owners like Flom hope will persist.

From a young age, Justin Flom made a name for himself in magic, performing his unconventional, engaging tricks for audiences in his home state of Minnesota, and then in Las Vegas. He frequently appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” performed at Madison Square Garden, and entertained at corporate events. He co-created Wizard Wars, a magic reality show on YouTube that premiered on Syfy with Penn and Teller hosting.

When the pandemic shut down live events in the spring of 2020, Flom, like many others, had to pivot. At home during lockdown, he poked around his garage, thinking about what he could build or create. He’d always had an interest in spray paint.

So, with a laser cutter, Flom made a stencil of Muhammad Ali and used it to create a spray-painted piece of art. The video of the process got 50 million views in less than a week. Subsequent videos mixed home repair with art. For example, a hole in the wall became the receptacle for a plastic carrot that was part of a spray-painted portrait of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

“Viewers kept saying, ‘these stencils are really cool,’” said Flom, who’s among the most popular content creators online with nearly 28 million subscribers and over 24 billion views on YouTube. On TikTok, he has 9.6 million followers and 279 million likes.

“I knew there was something there,” he said. “That began pretty early on, the thought of, ‘I’ve got to release this for the public, and how do I do this?’”

Flom was no stranger to viral videos. As a magician, he’d started embracing online content in 2011, posting tricks on YouTube and other platforms with success. His “Sawing a Baby in Half!!” video has 172 million views on Facebook alone.

Now, Flom has gone from YouTube and TikTok to retail, having recently launched Flo-Magic, an airbrush kit for kids with washable paint, at Walmart. He’s one of a growing number of viral content creators that have launched their own brand after building up a massive following, a trend that’s accelerated in recent years. Some 49% of customers make daily, weekly, or monthly purchases because of influencer posts, according to a Sprout Social influencer marketing report. Flo-Magic straddles the line between the STEAM (science, technology, education, art, and math) toys market—valued at $1.8 billion in 2022, and projected to reach $3.6 billion by 2030—and the global arts and crafts market, valued at $42.88 billion in 2023 and projected to reach $70.33 billion by 2032.

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Flom tapped into his Walmart connections from his magic days and collaborated with a brand incubator to bring Flo-Magic to life

Flom debuted two versions of Flo-Magic—Adventure and Enchanted—in 2,000 Walmart stores across the country and on Walmart.com this fall. The kits include markers, stencils, and his signature airbrush.

The connection to Walmart came through Flom’s earlier work in magic. He hosted Walmart's International Shareholders Conference for five years in a row. “You never know what’s going to happen—you could be on stage for 30 minutes or for 30 seconds —and they loved that I was very flexible,” he said.

With his stencil idea still in the planning stages, Flom called his Walmart contact who put him in touch with Allstar Innovations, a brand incubator that works with influencers. In 2023, he worked with Allstar to create a stencil prototype, then had his seven-year-old and four-year-old daughters test it out.

“The four-year-old all by herself was layering stencils, picking colors, and creating really special drawings,” he said. “I felt like we really hit a home run.”

Part of the marketing push has been in-store appearances. On a display in his local Walmart, Flom created spray paint art of Wile E. Coyote digging with a jackhammer. In another store, he made an appearance to paint Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" on a hoodie. Flom also slipped a $100 bill in one of the product packages for a lucky customer to find. “That’s just a fun thing,” he said.

He’s hoping the brand will get a boost from the trend of nondigital toys, like puzzles, that was sparked during the pandemic, and that holiday buying will be robust. “It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens with product,” Flom said. “It’s going to hinge more on the content and my promotion abilities than my name,” since he believes it’s what he creates that viewers end up remembering, not him.

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To create engaging, viral video content, Flom carefully tracks analytics and always makes an early promise he fully delivers on

As Flom waits for sales numbers to come in, he’s laser-focused on continuing to create viral content that viewers crave, and he has it down to a science.

It’s a needed approach, he says, in today’s deluge of internet content combined with people’s ever-shortening attention spans. The art itself is not enough, he says.

“Creating interesting ideas is only half the job,” Flom said. “The second half is to make content which people actually stop and watch on their social media swipe feed.” You need a strong premise, eye-catching moments, and to make an early, enticing promise in your video that you fully deliver on, he added. Make the promise that viewers will learn something or see something they’ve never seen before in the first three seconds of your video to hook viewers, said Flom.

Part of his success has come with committing to creating content the public wants to see, which often differs from he wants. But, ultimately the two mesh. “You end up being passionate about what the audience wants,” he said. “And the real secret is that it’s all about watch time—how many people are finishing your video.”

Most of all, Flom’s viewers want to see the secret passages, pranks, and custom-made doors he builds in his “Trap-Door-House,” his family’s home in Las Vegas. He calls his home’s foam pit bedroom and trampoline room “domestic silliness.”

“The great thing about social media videos is, you can do everything. That’s a fun idea, let’s try it out, and you get to fail a lot. If it’s bad, no one will see it. That’s how the feed works. It allows you the freedom to mess around. Be more willing to fail.”

Meanwhile, Flom is working on balancing enticing content with promoting his product. In a recent video, he mentioned Flo-Magic and only got one million views. In subsequent videos, he’s mentioned the product, but less.

“The viewer is paramount,” he said, “and I can incorporate product drop into videos as long as I keep the ratio to what’s right for the viewer.”

As for next steps, Flom is working on new designs and wants to expand product options by collaborating with brands like Warner Bros. and Marvel to make his Looney Tunes and Incredible Hulk artwork replicable for kids at home. For now, it’s wait and see. “I’m so excited to see what kids do with the kits,” Flom said.

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