The Brand Substack Directory

The benchmark. The number cited anytime someone argues that brand-owned newsletters can build real audience. Career-focused women, interviews, work advice. Predates the current Substack wave and carries credibility because of it.

Named as an homage to Claire McCardell's 1956 book (reissued in 2022 with a foreword from Tory). Mixes product stories, fashion week recaps, and the "Women at Work" interview series. Tory herself has been publicly engaged in the Substack strategy conversation. Generously links to other Substack newsletters, which is the move that signals a brand actually gets the platform.

One of the first and still one of the most committed. Saie hired a full-time Substack editor, which signals real investment. Content ranges from voter education to sustainability to staff recs to founder conversations. Founder Laney Crowell has emphasized that brands need real bandwidth to make Substack work. In other words: you can't dabble.

Celebrity-founder brand, but notably not Selena-led. Written by the creative strategy team. Early posts have focused on product development backstories (the Soft Pinch Bouncy Blush post was an early hit). Tests whether a big-name brand can sustain a smaller, more intimate voice on Substack.

One of the few brand Substacks aimed at parents, a massive underserved audience on the platform. Recent posts include "Diary of a Dad," profiling creators on their parenting routines. Smart angle: not about the monitor, about the life the monitor is part of. Also smart for a product category where trust and authenticity matter more than performance media.

Anonymous first-person voice. Described as DKNY PR girl meets Gossip Girl. Of the 21 product links in their first send, 10 sold. The numbers are real but modest. Substack isn't an email marketing replacement. The launch is widely credited with kicking off the current brand-Substack wave.

Smart because the newsletter isn't trying to stand alone. It's part of a literary series that extended into a hardcover book and book club partnerships. Hinge isn't using Substack to move product; it's using it to say something about love. That's the move.

The cultural-history play. Dispatches on the history of the pillow, beds in art, sleep news. Feels closer to a literary magazine than a product newsletter. Template for how a category-adjacent brand can own a larger cultural conversation.

Arguably the best-in-class B2B brand Substack. Blackbird is a restaurant loyalty platform, and The Supersonic reads like a trade magazine: features, profiles, essays, interviews for the restaurant professional. Proof that brand Substacks can work outside fashion and beauty.

Recipes, wine videos, activism notes. Small business Substack done with a point of view. Proof the format scales down.

Uses Substack to validate travel expertise in a way that's distinct from its existing email program. Smart separation: Substack for editorial, their existing email program for everything else.

Notable because it's a platform bet on a sub-brand, not the mothership. Anthropologie is treating Maeve as a full standalone brand with its own social, influencer, TV, and Substack presence. Watching whether Substack gets used for true editorial or becomes a glorified catalog.

Part of the 2025 brand wave. Publishes bi-weekly storytelling on style, culture, and community with guest editors. Full read coming in the next update.

Launched with Casey Lewis of After School as guest editor and now rotates new voices through each era of the newsletter. A smart way to borrow credibility without over-committing to one voice. Full read coming in the next update.

A weekly music discovery newsletter from the Bandcamp Daily editorial team, featuring one artist per issue. Full read coming in the next update.

A daily chart analysis newsletter from Editor-in-Chief Hannah Karp and the Billboard chart team. Legacy brand operating editorially on Substack. Full read coming in the next update.

The biggest public company on Substack. Features Shopify executives and outside experts writing about commerce trends, entrepreneurship, and industry shifts. Notable because it signals that Substack is no longer just for consumer brands. Platform and infrastructure companies are now using it to build authority with the communities their products serve.

Written by brand consultant Emma Apple Chozick, who also runs her own Substack (gr8 collab, 4,400+ subs). ShopMy is the affiliate platform many Substack creators already use to monetize, and signals reads more like B2B content for the creators who are their customers than consumer storytelling. Another example of the "bring in a known Substack voice" launch playbook, following American Eagle and others. Platform companies are using Substack to build authority with the exact communities their product serves.

A case where the founder's name and the brand's name are the same thing. Weekly recipes, behind-the-scenes from the Ottolenghi test kitchen, and two new recipes per issue (one free, one paid). The rare brand Substack that charges for access and it works, because the founder built the audience long before the newsletter existed.

The original template. Travel recs, founder thoughts, renovation stories, recipes, skincare, framed as "me off duty," though she does lift the curtain on building Ghia. Affiliate links are present but honest. She's been publicly reflective about the identity risk of being "Melanie IS Ghia" and using Night Shade partly to carve space around that. Probably the single most influential founder newsletter for how other brands are thinking about this.

Frequently cited as the A++ example of founder-led brand Substack. Tagline: "the art of becoming who you are." Beauty, design, founder life reads, building slowly and intentionally. In a recent interview, Dianna listed her favorite reads on the platform: Melanie Masarin, Jess Graves, Hillary Kerr, Laurel Pantin, Courtney at Unpolished. Small thing, but paying attention to other writers is how founders should behave on Substack.

Clare has said Clare V. really started with a blog back around 2007, so the format is a homecoming. Substack courted her explicitly as part of building out the founder-led brand newsletter category.

Casual, funny, and punchy. The creative director's personal voice extends brand identity through Paris travel recs, styling tips (aka "SomHACKS"), and late-night internet finds ("inSOMnia"). Reads like a text from a friend. Example of how a creative director can humanize a brand without making it a performance.

Twice-monthly musings on life, routines, and product recommendations. After watching High Sport sell out from a Substack mention, Minkoff bet that building a platform presence could create the kind of personal connection that drives eventual purchase. A good case study for how founder newsletters can work as slow-burn brand investment rather than direct-response.

After 14 years at Parachute Home, Kaye left to write about the liminal space of post-founder life. Not a brand newsletter in the conventional sense, but Parachute's recognizable identity gives Second Story View its reach. Watching this as an early example of a new category: former founders writing publicly about exit, reinvention, and what comes after the thing you built.