The rapper did not show up. This is how certain careers begin: not with a revelation under perfect lighting, but with an empty chair at a recording session. Eric Sheinkop, then a young manager in Chicago, had booked an artist for a McDonald’s commercial. The part still needed a voice, so Sheinkop stepped to the microphone and did it himself. He was not trying to become a recording star. He was trying to get the job finished.
Then checks began arriving. Months after the session, money kept turning up for work already done. Sheinkop did not understand the mechanism. His brother Jonathan did. “Do that again,” he advised. It was funny, direct and economically sound. The checks were royalties, and they gave the brothers a glimpse of a marketplace hiding in plain sight: brands needed music, independent artists needed income and exposure, and the existing routes between them were needlessly narrow.
That accidental performance became part of the founding lore of Music Dealers, the company Sheinkop started in 2008 with Jonathan and partners. It also established a pattern that has followed him into his current business, The Desire Company. First, find talented people whose work is poorly distributed. Next, build a system that carries their value to institutions large enough to pay for it. The medium can change. The argument remains.
The sixteen-year-old executive
Sheinkop was 16 when he formed Bandit Productions, an artist-management and record-label venture. At an age when most people are asking permission to stay out late, he was attempting to build an apparatus around Chicago musicians. He has said that he did not know the word “startup” in the way founders use it now. There was no ritual pitch deck and no local mythology of venture capital to imitate. There was work, observation and the stubborn conviction that he was already doing the thing.
Music Dealers gave that instinct scale. Its searchable, pre-cleared catalogue let agencies and brands license independent music without wandering through the traditional label maze. Artists could reach commercials, film, television, games and live programs. In 2011, Coca-Cola formalized a worldwide partnership with the company and took a minority stake. The arrangement made Music Dealers a key sourcing partner for a program active in 140 countries. For an enterprise built to widen the gate, the symbolism was almost suspiciously tidy.
Coca-Cola’s distribution could carry a song farther than most labels could. Sheinkop described artists recording for the company and receiving the sort of worldwide exposure normally reserved for established acts. The partnership also brought Judith Levey into his life. She was leading global brand public relations at Coca-Cola when their professional paths crossed. They would later marry and build his next company together. Corporate synergy, in this instance, acquired a domestic sequel.
Recognition accumulated. Billboard put the 29-year-old on its 2011 “30 Under 30” list. Crain’s Chicago Business included him in its Tech 50 the next year. His university, Wisconsin-Madison, gave him an Entrepreneurial Achievement Award in 2013. Coca-Cola nominated him to carry the Olympic torch in connection with the 2014 Sochi Games. He also turned his working education into two books on music and marketing, Hit Brands and Return of the Hustle.
The glitter came with bills. Sheinkop has since spoken about being $20,000 short on payroll and about opening seven offices before the underlying business justified the flourish. His explanation for the latter is painfully good: the locations looked impressive on a business card. Ambition enjoys stationery. The older operator tells the story as tuition paid to product-market fit, and as proof that ego can become a line item.
“You have to build a business with the thought that you could operate it every day for the rest of your life.”Eric Sheinkop
By the end of 2014, he had sold control and left Music Dealers. A person who had spent years urging brands to think deliberately about sound was suddenly between acts. He wrote. He watched retail. And he noticed another class of people with useful knowledge and inadequate distribution.
The influencer’s knowledgeable neighbor
Online shopping had perfected abundance and left certainty as an exercise for the customer. There were stars, anonymous reviews and a swelling class of influencers. There were fewer chances to hear from the person who used the equipment every day for work. Sheinkop and Judith saw credentialed professionals being omitted from a system lavishly engineered to reward reach.
The business they launched publicly as DesireList in 2018 eventually became The Desire Company. Its premise grew sharper with the name change: match products with people who possess relevant, lived expertise; film those people explaining how and why they use the products; put the resulting video where a shopper is making a decision. A celebrity’s hair stylist may be more helpful than the celebrity. An astronaut can explain gear without needing to become a lifestyle account. A veterinarian’s authority is not improved by a dance trend.
The word “expert” can be stretched until it covers anyone holding a ring light. The company’s commercial distinction is vetting. Its community spans veterinarians, scientists, chefs, trainers, Olympic athletes, stylists and other working professionals. The production work turns their knowledge into demonstrations for product pages, retail media, social channels and in-store screens. Sheinkop summarizes the desired outcome with a compact opposition: shoppers should be informed, not influenced.
The model moved from a dining-room wall covered with Post-it notes to a roughly 7,000-square-foot production studio in Chicago. Sheinkop still works from Atlanta, while the studio performs the peculiar choreography of commerce content. On one day he described, the team was installing sinks and handling fur for separate shoots. There is no auteur’s shame in the catalogue. A faucet deserves competent lighting too.
In 2024, The Desire Company announced that its Series B, led by Cleveland Avenue with support from Valor Siren Ventures, valued the company at $97 million. It also introduced Retail RMEDI 360, designed to distribute expert product education through the shopping journey. The company said more than 80 brands had used its approach, reporting client results that included higher conversion, longer time on site and larger orders. Those are company-reported figures, useful as evidence of the pitch’s direction rather than a universal law of commerce.
The more revealing measure may be location. Its videos appear with retailers including Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Sam’s Club, Tractor Supply and Ulta Beauty. This is not content floating somewhere above the sale, hoping to be remembered. It sits near the button. The old Music Dealers insight survives intact: distribution is part of the product.
A founder edits himself
Sheinkop’s second company is also a test of whether an entrepreneur can revise his own habits. He and Judith are spouses, parents and co-founders. When she left Coca-Cola for the startup, early traction was slow. He has recalled seeing exhaustion and disappointment on her face six months in, a moment stripped of the theatrical confidence founders often borrow for public use. They built boundaries: family time means putting away the computer and phone. Business does not follow them into the bathroom. Romance has survived worse policies.
His account of leadership now emphasizes empowerment more than personal velocity. He talks about building the foundation before contemplating an exit and about operating the business as if no buyer will rescue anyone from Monday morning. He hosts Tap Into An Expert, interviewing retail-media and commerce leaders, and has become increasingly public about the distinction between popularity and credibility.
“Never compromise on why you started.”Eric Sheinkop
There is a neat temptation to frame his career as music followed by shopping, a clean pivot from one industry to another. The stronger reading is that he never left his first subject. He remains interested in who gets heard, who gets paid and which systems decide. Music Dealers asked whether an unsigned artist could reach a worldwide campaign without a major label. The Desire Company asks whether a working professional can reach a shopper without first becoming famous.
Both bets depend on institutions behaving sensibly after being offered a more efficient route to talent. Institutions are not famous for this. Yet Sheinkop has twice built machinery around the possibility. His teenage intuition was that the traditional lane was not the only lane. Nearly three decades later, he is still paving alternatives, older now, candid about the tollbooths he constructed too early, and less seduced by how the office list looks in print.
The internet has no shortage of voices. Its shortage is confidence about which voice deserves belief at the precise moment belief becomes expensive. Sheinkop’s answer is almost quaint: find someone who has done the work, let that person explain, and make the explanation easy to reach. The future he is selling looks suspiciously like good advice, properly distributed.