HAUZ is a new 360-degree global talent management agency that represents creators, activists and artists whose stories and content have a positive impact.
London-based entrepreneur Zora Feraji is the CEO and founder of HAUZ, which she launched in October 2023 as a division of her creative agency AfterHourz. The business already has more than 50 creators on its roster and mainly represents beauty, fashion and wellness influencers. The majority of its roster is based in the UK, including Sumaya Ali, Purdey Laura, Isidora Fernandez, Andy Grover, Sehar Fatima, Ruben De Monte, Aunty Nimu and Shikha Doorvashi Ramjutan.
Key takeaways
- HAUZ is a 360-degree global talent management agency that is a division of the creative agency AfterHourz. Both companies were founded by entrepreneur Zora Feraji.
- Feraji launched HAUZ in October 2023 and the agency represents more than 50 creators. Its UK talent roster includes Aunty Nimu, Isidora Fernandez, Ruben De Monte and Sumaya Ali.
- HAUZ has a holistic approach and provides influencers with mental health services, financial advice and growth strategy sessions.
- Instead of taking a commission from influencers’ brand deals, HAUZ adds a 20% fee on top of a creator’s fees, which is payable by the client.
- Feraji is launching Clubhauz, a creator hub where influencers can co-work, produce content using aesthetic backdrops and network with their peers. This is set to open by 2025.
Feraji used her own negative experience as an influencer to build HAUZ. The founder was a creator during the “Instagram era” when she lived in the US. She said she was in a bad mental space and didn’t feel supported by her management.
She told CORQ: “The people who I thought were supposed to be looking after me were actually looking after that 20% or 30% of what I was making.”
Feraji has used this experience to ensure creators feel supported by HAUZ, which has a holistic, creator-led approach. In addition to managing talent and facilitating brand deals, the company provides its roster with mental health, financial literacy and accelerated growth services. This includes monthly strategy sessions, workshops with speakers from social media platforms such as Pinterest and Meta, financial forecasting and pension planning advice, supplying relevant legal and tax information, and access to therapy.
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Clubhauz
Its talent roster can access these professionals and book sessions through HAUZ’s internal app. Creators can also use AfterHourz’s production facilities and offices to create content and record their podcasts.
Now, Feraji is working to make these services and app available to the greater creator economy with Clubhauz. This will be a hub where creators can co-work, produce content using aesthetic backdrops and network with their peers. This will be bookable by the hour or day.
“On Instagram, everything is so aesthetic and you feel like you can’t necessarily be a creator, even a UGC creator, unless you live in a certain style of house or have access to a certain backdrop,” said Feraji. “I think by providing creative hubs for talent where they can record their content that is ‘socially acceptable’ in terms of a backdrop, then we manage to break down those barriers [of who can become an influencer] and more people can make money from social media.”
Feraji is currently fundraising for Clubhauz, which is open for pre-registration. She plans to open locations in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris and Dubai by 2025.
HAUZ’s talent roster and brand partnerships
Feraji wants to represent a diverse group of creators. She explained: “Your influencer campaign needs to look the way that London streets are, which is very diverse.”
Similar to AfterHourz’s mission of working with sustainable brands, Feraji doesn’t want to represent influencers who do “huge ASOS hauls” or have a “wasteful lifestyle”. However, she said this “doesn’t mean that we don’t work with Shein because if talent needs to pay the bills, we understand that”.
The influencers on HAUZ’s roster have varying following sizes and the founder said its busiest influencers have between 40,000 and 70,000 followers.
Feraji referenced US-based creator Jules’ (Styled With Juless) work with Pinterest at Coachella from April 2024 as a strong brand campaign. HAUZ worked with the visual planning app and United Talent Agency to come up with the content ideas. Feraji said this was a “great collaboration in terms of what good content looks like that’s talent-led, rather than a brand coming to you with a brief”.
Jules produced multiple ads and interviewed creators and festival-goers about concert fashion and trends. One Reel has had more than 705,000 views and 11,100 likes with a 31.5% engagement rate. Another video has a 31.7% engagement rate with more than 264,000 views and 11,200 likes.
So what do HAUZ’s talent want from brand partnerships? “To be paid on time.” As with creative freedom, influencers also want briefs that act as guidelines rather than scripts. “Our talent really appreciates when a brand takes the time to explain the brief to them and there’s a little bit of an ideation process.” She noted that this tends to happen more in the US than in the UK.
Looking ahead, Feraji is mainly focused on building Clubhauz and signing more influencers to HAUZ’s growing roster.
“My goal is to have this ecosystem that really serves creators.”
By Caroline Edwards, CORQ news and features writer. Picture credit: Zora Feraji
