Small team, big momentum: How Realm turned creator relationships into retail expansion
With Kin, one fractional marketer can power Realm’s community of 1,300+ creators—streamlining sourcing, gifting, and outreach to keep pace with the brand’s rapid growth.
Wins at a glance
- 10x EMV
- Growth in the first full month (February to March 2026) of using Kin at scale.
- 412%
- Increase in creator content volume from February to March 2026.
- Target + Erewhon
- Retail rollouts fueled by organic creator and community momentum.
The spark
Realm is a clean air care brand bringing transparency to the fragrance aisle—and growing fast. Since launching in September 2025, the brand has expanded into major retailers including Target and Erewhon, with organic creator content and community-led discovery helping build momentum.
Behind that momentum is a relationship-driven creator strategy. Realm gifts roughly 300 products to creators each month, nurturing ambassadors who genuinely love the brand into longer-term affiliate partnerships and paid collaborations.
And behind that? One fractional marketer. Lexi Underberger manages everything from sourcing and gifting to paid partnerships and campaign execution, while overseeing a community of 1,300+ creators.
Realm’s growth was quickly outpacing its workflows. Creator management lived across spreadsheets, DMs, and email threads, making it increasingly difficult to scale outreach and stay on top of everything happening across its creator community.
The brand needed a way to keep up with its own growth. As Realm’s creator community expanded, Lexi needed to manage more creators, campaigns, and moving pieces—without adding more hours to her already-fractional role.
“We wanted a platform that could help us scale without any major lift from our team. Kin stood out because it’s AI-first. It basically works overtime for us, allowing us to automate the busywork while still keeping creator relationships personal.”
The shift
With Kin, Realm can manage a bigger creator program—without needing a bigger team. Sourcing, gifting, outreach, and campaign tracking all happen in one place, with automation taking repetitive steps off her plate.
Gifting went from one-by-one to hundreds at a time. With Kin’s Shopify integration, Realm can pull creator details and place large batches of orders in seconds—saving hours in the seeding process each month.
Outreach now scales with Realm’s community. With Kin’s bulk messaging, Lexi can reach multiple creators at once across email and DMs—keeping conversations moving as the community grows.
The Target launch called for targeted sourcing. Realm used Kin to find new, high-quality creators through relevant hashtags like #newattarget, #targetfinds, and #targetrun—then easily tracked their performance throughout the campaign.
The impact was immediate. In Realm’s first full month using Kin at scale, creator content volume jumped 412% month-over-month, while EMV grew nearly 10x, as more efficient sourcing, gifting, and outreach helped drive greater visibility and organic discovery.
“The Kin team has been incredibly responsive. It genuinely feels like the platform is being shaped around how we actually run our creator program day to day.”
Their win, their words
“Kin has enabled us to scale creator activity and brand awareness in a way that wasn’t possible for our small team before.”