Olga Kay is not your typical Internet star. She began as a professional circus juggler, moving to the U.S. from her native Russia to work with Ringling Brothers. After being introduced to YouTube, she saw the opportunities it presented. Through a lot of good timing and the force of her own sheer will, Kay propelled herself into a lucrative career as a YouTube artist. Beginning with videos of her sensational juggling and then branching into sketch and character comedy, Kay’s buoyant energy and dedication made her a sensation in no time at all. Her entrepreneurial spirit then compelled her started her own line of socks, called Mooshwalks.
I caught up with Kay to speak to her more about how her entrepreneurship has helped launch her online stardom:
How did you become a YouTube sensation?
It goes back a little bit. I started my entertainment career as a juggler in the circus. In 2006, when YouTube was in its first year of operation, my friends asked me to open an account to like and favorite their videos so their videos could be more popular. I opened an account and used the screen name Olga Kay. I noticed that there is a huge community of people who were talking to the camera. I couldn’t understand why, but I was so captivated by what was happening on the screen. One of those people was LonelyGirl15, as well as Lisa Donovan, who eventually created Maker Studios. I started doing the same thing.
I didn‘t know how to talk to or use the camera or how to edit, so I learned as I went on. I went to one of the gatherings that YouTubers had in the park with around 300 people. I would come in and start juggling balls, and people would ask, “Who is this girl?” I would give them my business card with my YouTube channel on it; I was one of the first people doing this way back in 2006, because YouTube was not a business. People would film videos of everyone at the gatherings and then upload them to YouTube.
All of a sudden my channel started to grow. I thought, “Oh, if only I do more of that and get more content, my channel will grow.” So that year, I opened up a credit card and went to every gathering in America and one in Canada - there were 8 of them - and met everyone. I met Shay Carl, who became a co-founder of Maker Studios, and Philip DeFranco, who gave me one of my first boosts on YouTube. All of a sudden, I went from 3000 subscribers to 8000 subscribers overnight. Charles Trippy was another great friend from that time. None of us knew the others, but we became great friends and helped each other grow. As the platform was growing, all of us were growing as well.
In 2009, I created a character called “Emo Girl.” She was a character based on a typical teenager. She was dramatic, confused and always upset about something. A lot of my audience connected with this character, and my channel started to grow.
When did it become a full time business for you?
From the beginning. I would spend 12 hours a day without getting paid trying to figure out what the platform was all about. I would say 2009 is when it all changed. I got my first sponsorship through Ford. I did a Ford Fiesta campaign where we all got free cars and insurance and just had to do one video a month to promote the car. Because I was doing that, a lot of other companies started to pay attention to my channel and offered me different deals. Monetarily it became more of a business for me then, but I treated it as a business from the beginning.
As a creator in that space, what’s the best way for brands to work with you?
Give me the freedom, and trust in my ability to understand who my audience is and what they want to see.
How has the industry developed since you’ve been a part of it?
It develops in new ways every night! Five years ago when I would go into a meeting and say, “I’m a social media star. I would love to partner up with you because I think can bring value,” people would look at me and say, “Oh. No . . . we don’t do that.” They didn’t have respect for the power of social media five years ago. Now when you go into the room and show them how many impressions you have, all of a sudden you become a valuable asset. For example, I started as an actress in Hollywood and it was impossible to convince my agent to even send me out on auditions. Today, if you have a social media following you are more likely to get the role you are auditioning for. Once I built my following, Hollywood Studios would come to me and say, “We love what you’re doing. We want you to write scripts around our movies as a marketing campaign through your sketch comedy. You can use the idea of the movie, but turn it into your own content and we’ll pay you for it.”
And then you launched your sock company?
Yes! My sock company is called Mooshwalks. I love socks, and I didn’t want to be another YouTube personality that has a t-shirt brand with my logo on it, mainly because I don’t wear t-shirts and I know I can’t sell something I don’t really wear. I love socks, and when I studied my demographic, I realized it was 70 percent 13-25 year-old females. They followed my crazy fashion sense, and if I could create a product that was interesting and different they might just buy it.
Back in 2010, I partnered up with a company to create a Moosh shoes. My fans helped me design a shoe. It has zippers, dog tags, and pockets where you could put pictures of your girlfriend or boyfriend. The price point was around $70, but I wasn’t Nike so I was so terrified no one was going to buy that shoe. However, because it was so unique and different, people did. It made me realize if I made something original, people would follow. I also didn’t want to be just another person who made socks; I wanted to create something unique. So, that’s why I made the original socks with ears. I did my research to see if people had made socks with ears already, and there was no one. No competition, two years ago.
My next biggest challenge was that I’m a YouTube celebrity. I don’t manufacture clothing. I was really against going into a company that already manufactured things for other YouTube stars and then paid $2-4 profit, after their cost of manufacturing and fulfillment is covered. I realized that I was building up all of these companies and sending all of the traffic to their websites, and at the end of the day I would just get $2-4 back. That is a low risk venture; great for someone who is just starting out and is afraid to take a big risk. But, I wanted to create a business around my brand which meant taking bigger risks. So the struggle was, how do I manufacture something when I have no experience manufacturing? And it’s not only socks, it’s socks with EARS; it’s not t-shirts where I can go to downtown L.A. and say, “Hey, let’s make a t-shirt and slap this logo on it.” I had to learn everything from scratch in that industry as well. I had to go to six different manufacturers to get the ears created. Nobody did that in the market, so no one wanted to take my idea into manufacturing because it was too much of a headache for them. After a long trial MooshWalks socks with ears were born.
How have you managed to leverage your celebrity to make this successful?
Manufacturing everything from scratch meant I had to invest a lot of money from the beginning, and hope that people would buy it. There was a big chance that no one would buy the socks. I launched the company back in 2013, right before the holidays. My first investment was $20,000, a good chunk of money that I decided to throw out there and see what happens. I built a website before I had the product, without even pictures, just drawings of the socks that I put up on the website. I ran a pre-order campaign to see who was interested. There was such a big return that by the time I actually got the socks, I had recouped my money. Right away, I realized there was a business there, and I had to keep on going. The biggest challenge today is to bring my brand to the masses, not just my YouTube followers.
I saw that you also have a YouTube channel for the socks?
I’ve leveraged the Olga Kay channel to do marketing for the socks. All of my fans knew about them. The reason I started a sock channel is because eventually, I want to create content that the socks are part of, like an animated show or different commercials that will go just on that channel. I want to separate my fans that love my sketch comedy or other personal content, and the people that are really obsessed with the brand and just want to follow what the brand does.
You’ve managed to build a huge Twitter and Instragram following. How have you managed to branch from one medium to another?
Once you’re a YouTube star, it’s easier for you to say, “Hey, I just opened a SnapChat account, go follow me.” I used to do a daily vlog on the OlgaKay2 YouTube channel. All the editing and filming became much more difficult as I was running my MooshWalks socks business. At around the same time, Snapchat became a social media platform, and I realized on Snapchat you film for ten seconds and then at the end of the day you have edited video; a whole vlog. I told my fans, “This is where I’m vlogging every day now, if you want to see my everyday updates go on Snapchat.” It was easier to just transfer people that way.
What are some of the people who you love to collaborate with?
I love to collaborate with Shane Dawson. We’ve known each other for a very long time, and we’ve seen each other’s careers grow. Shane is just such a huge weight in the community, his following is so strong. People will do anything for him. We recently did a video called “The Pizza Challenge.” Our pizzas had twinkies, pickles with a side of tuna juice. Not only Shane would do anything to make a video entertaining, his viewers are also incredibly loyal, and since he was in my video my views skyrocketed. Everyone is just like, “Who’s this Olga Kay chick? Let’s follow her.”
Grace Helbig has also been a huge supporter of MooshWalks socks brand. Even though she always gets a new pair for as a gift she also buys more pairs just to support what I am doing. She shares her post on her social media which helps my brand grow.
The YouTube and internet community is huge and I became friends with a lot of creators over time. Taryn Southern, Destorm, Chester See, Toby Turner, King Bach and Amanda Steele are just few that I want to mention who have helped me create awareness around the MooshWalks Brand. It’s hard to build a business from scratch and I am so lucky to be part of this community surrounded by people who want to see me succeed as much as I want them to succeed.
Who would you like to collaborate with?
I would love to collaborate with Lindsey Stirling. The amount of talent that she has -- I just have this vision of digging deep into my past and taking my juggling skills with her violin skills and putting us together on a mountain somewhere with beautiful cinematography. I had this vision for a couple years now. That would be great.
Murray Newlands would be thrilled if you’d share this story with your networks. You can find him on Twitter (@murraynewlands), Vine (murraynewlands) and learn more about his work at www.murraynewlands.com
