After painful lessons as a child star, JoJo Siwa is reclaiming her multimillion-dollar brand.
· Business Insider
Cate Hellman for BI
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When I first wrote about YouTube megastar JoJo Siwa, she was 16 and had just bought a house in Los Angeles, complete with a rainbow-colored bed and a duvet cover with her face on it.
Her technicolor world looks very different now. So do the questions.
When Siwa joins our Zoom call, I hardly recognize her. Gone are the bright rainbow clothes and the side ponytail anchored by the trademark bow that defined her. They're replaced by a more understated denim V-neck top and a slicked-back hairstyle.
Still, one thing remains: her bow. Granted, her sartorial signature is now in a muted palette, but it's still there, decorating her long blonde hair. Siwa still has that million-dollar smile that made over 12 million people subscribe to her YouTube channel, and the ease that comes with someone who has years of navigating life as an internet superstar under her belt.
JoJo Siwa has been in the spotlight since she was a child.Cate Hellman for BI
After all, the 22-year-old has already lived many lives. At 9 years old, she competed on season two of "Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition," placing 5th for showcasing her high-energy dance techniques.
After becoming a staple on Lifetime's reality show "Dance Moms," she signed an exclusive licensing deal with Nickelodeon at 13 that helped turn her personality into a global brand.
She appeared on TV shows and in movies, performed live music, and had her namesake and face on bows sold worldwide. Her only concert tour, which ran from 2019 to 2022, brought in over $26.9 million in ticket sales alone in its first year, according to Billboard.
Each milestone expanded her reach, but not necessarily her control. "I basically had control over 0% of my IP back when I was with Nickelodeon," Siwa told Business Insider.
Though her image powered a business that would sell over 80 million of those bows — whose sales have generated over $400 million, according to Forbes' conservative estimate — she wasn't calling the shots. A decade later, after years of waiting out contracts, Siwa is reclaiming the business she helped build by launching her own bow line.
"It's been a long time since I've personally made a JoJo Bow myself. It's been about 12 years," she said, referencing the company she started with her mom, JoJo Bows. Now, she said, "Every single bow, I'm hands-on, designing, picking the color, every single thing is my choice."
Ownership became the point.
"The biggest lesson that I learned is when it's your brand, when it's your IP, stick to what you believe," she said. "Don't let people sway you. Don't let people change you."
Making a million-dollar empire
Siwa didn't chase fame necessarily. As a child, it felt like an extracurricular activity.
"My mom used to be like, 'Honey, let's go hang out with your friends that are your age,'" she said. "And I'd be like, 'No, I want to film a YouTube video.'"
Siwa's first video, posted almost exactly 11 years ago, was a simple Q&A in which she answered questions from "Dance Mons" fans who became invested in her. (It has since amassed over 1.2 million views.)
Other early videos included YouTube staples at the time: unboxing fan gifts, room tours, a "baby food challenge," and vlogs. Then, in 2016, she released her debut single, "Boomerang," which has since amassed over a billion views on YouTube.
Nickelodeon was paying attention and signed Siwa to a multi-year talent and licensing deal in 2017, catapulting her from reality-show fame to the mainstream limelight at just 13 years old. Through her deal with Nickelodeon, Siwa not only co-hosted "Lip Sync Battle Shorties" alongside Nick Cannon but also leveraged the company's global licensing apparatus, scaling her company, JoJo Bows, into a multimillion-dollar merchandising operation.
Within a few years, Siwa was at the center of a full-scale empire: She became one of the network's flagship stars, launched merchandise lines with major retailers like Claire's and JCPenney, toured arenas, and built a fan base of over 12 million YouTube subscribers.
And many of them weren't just buying into Siwa — they were buying bows.
JoJo Siwa's name and face have been on a wide range of products and accessories.Cate Hellman for BI
She'd always been a little bit of a contradiction, though. She grew up quickly in the limelight yet struggled to shake off the child-star label.
"I remember being 20, and people were like, 'She's the little girl from "Dance Moms,"' Siwa recalled. "It was never like, 'She's a 20-year-old who built this incredible empire.'"
Back then, success for Siwa meant scale: follower counts, view counts, sold-out arenas. Now, "if I get through a day without crying, that's success," she said. Her goal for 2026 is to simply cry less. So far this year, she estimates she's cried three times — "exceptional work on my behalf," she quipped.
Backing herself
The JoJo Siwa brand was now instantly recognizable. And the child star, still not 18, understood that her image was inseparable from her success. She felt compelled to protect it.
Siwa eventually pushed for more creative control, a tug-of-war that eventually spilled out into the public when she criticized Nickelodeon in 2021, writing on Twitter (now X): "Working for a company as a real human being treated as only a brand is fun until it's not." The post appears to have been deleted since then.
For Siwa, though, the fight over control started long before that tweet.
A couple of years earlier, when she was 15, Siwa said Nickelodeon tried to produce a JoJo doll sporting two buns without running it past her. The collectible dolls, part of her licensing deal, were originally conceptualized to bring Siwa to life — colorful, with a side ponytail, and, yes, that bow.
"I freaked out," Siwa said. "As a kid, the side ponytail and bow was who I was. That was my complete identity. And so for them to just change it felt like they were trying to change me."
Siwa said she texted the president of consumer products the moment she saw it. "I said, 'No. 1, I hate it, but No. 2, I'm really hurt that people would do this without talking to me,'" she recalled. "'I'm really hurt that no one would consider talking to JoJo about JoJo.'"