Jamie Laing thinks tomorrow’s Fortune 500 will be built by creators. He might be right

But there are signs the future may one day belong to brands with faces, not logos and legacy. Laing founded Candy Kittens, the premium vegan sweets brand, with his business partner Ed Williams 15 years ago. Today, it reportedly generates £15m in annual revenue. The colorful, aesthetically packaged, cat-shaped gummies sit on the shelves of Tesco and Sainsbury’s alongside products from confectionery giants that have dominated the aisles for generations. For decades, companies such as Mars—which generates $50bn in annual sales—and Nestlé, with CHF 90bn ($113.1bn), built their empires through mass advertising and distribution. Candy Kittens is not about to topple either of them, but it’s doing a good job of winning shelf space, consumer attention, and market share without the mega marketing machine that made those giants. Once a novelty side project for a reality TV personality, Candy Kittens has grown into a credible challenger brand. The sweet spot Late 2025 saw what is perhaps Candy Kittens’ boldest move to date: snapping up snack brand Graze from Unilever for £36m. It’s a deal that says as much about the opportunity Laing saw as it does about the limitations of big corporate ownership. For Laing, the acquisition is a case study in exactly what gives smaller, creator-led brands their edge in the current market. “Big corporations aren’t agile at all,” Laing says. “They’re so stuck in their ways.” At Candy Kittens, an idea can go from concept to shelf in a matter of months, he adds. For a business the size of Unilever, Graze was a mere footnote. “It had kind of lost its s