For six months, the most important thing Izu Aginwa did for his future company was say no to it. He was running a college ministry in Southern California, using the social-media instincts he had picked up during a public-broadcasting internship in Chicago. The ministry grew. The posts looked good. Entrepreneurs and artists around the church began asking whether he could do the same for them. Aginwa sent them elsewhere.
This is an unusual way to discover a market, but a useful one. The requests did not arrive after a launch, a survey or a paid acquisition campaign. They arrived because people had already seen the work. Eventually, Aginwa gave the demand a small container. He called the side hustle Frsh Culture and squeezed copywriting, strategy and video shoots into the hours left over from his day job. It soon brought in roughly $1,000 a month.
The requests changed his mind
The first thousand dollars mattered because it answered a different question from the one founders usually ask. Not “Could this be enormous?” but “Will anybody pay?” Aginwa took a month away from the side hustle to study his own strengths and weaknesses. He concluded that he was good at relationships, assembling teams and directing the big picture; daily logistics were not his natural territory. So he built around that fact.
He had already gathered a loose bench of photographers, designers and content makers. The agency model formalized those relationships: one person would not be forced to write the copy, shoot the film, design the graphic, place the ad and explain the analytics. Specialists could remain specialists. About four months later, Aginwa partnered with creative co-founder Lola Sanchez and the business became Riches & Saint.
A studio at one end, a media desk at the other
Today the agency occupies the crowded but commercially useful space between a brand studio and a performance-marketing firm. It researches audiences and builds identities, messaging systems, packaging and guidelines. It designs websites, apps, landing pages and ecommerce stores. It makes photographs, videos, social posts and user-generated-content-style ads. Then it handles distribution through paid media, email, SMS and influencer outreach. Development, conversion work, speed and search infrastructure sit in the middle.
One brief, four connected jobs
The customer is a brand that does not merely need a new logo or a new ad account, but wants the parts to agree. Riches & Saint points to work across apparel, education, skincare, health and wellness, pet services, real estate and medspas. It says it has worked across more than 20 verticals and grown more than 390 brands. Those are company figures, not an audited census, but they reveal the intended position: broad enough for a startup or celebrity-backed consumer line, integrated enough to replace several vendors.
What the work cost - and what it returned
The agency does not publish a fixed rate card. Aginwa has described a custom process: determine what a client needs, estimate the time and shape a price around the scope. That flexibility is attractive when the job crosses several disciplines. It also requires disciplined scoping, because a custom engagement can quietly become three engagements wearing one coat.
Self-reported, 2025
| Campaign | Ad spend | Attributed revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Apparel / Meta | $1,546 | $129,340 |
| Medspa / Meta | $3,681 | $352,000 |
| Health / Google | $3,904 | $105,090 |
These campaign numbers come from the agency’s own 2025 portfolio. Client names, attribution windows, margins and independent verification are not provided, so the figures are best read as case snapshots rather than universal benchmarks.
The first thing to fail was the client list
The crisis arrived with rare efficiency. At the start of the pandemic, three clients left overnight. Riches & Saint had reached a point where the work felt repeatable; suddenly the team was discussing whether everyone should find regular jobs. Aginwa told them they were free to choose safety, but he would still be there building the company whether it took a month, a year or a decade.
The group stayed. Aginwa later said the firm went on to have its best year to that point. The important detail is not the tidy rebound - hindsight makes every recovery look preordained - but the choice that preceded it. The agency’s culture had been organized around developing people, not merely adding headcount. Aginwa’s stated idea was qualitative growth: improve the team as individuals and the client results should follow. A frightening week turned that sentiment into an operating test.
Where it fits - and what is worth copying
The market has no shortage of agencies promising growth. Riches & Saint’s difference is structural rather than mystical: creative direction, production, technology and distribution can share a brief and a feedback loop. The alternative is to hire a brand studio, a web shop and a media buyer, or build the functions in-house. The integrated model is most useful when a brand is changing several things at once - a launch, a rebrand, a new ecommerce experience or a campaign that needs fresh assets every week.
What can another operator copy? First, pay attention to repeated requests before inventing a product. Second, sell a narrow version while the stakes are low; the early $1,000 month taught Aginwa more than a speculative business plan could. Third, design roles around demonstrated strengths. Fourth, connect beautiful work to an observable commercial action. And finally, scope the handoffs. Integration is valuable only when responsibility is clear.
Those ideas have conditions. A specialist bench becomes expensive when work is sporadic. A full-service promise becomes muddy when no one owns the outcome. Spectacular ad returns can mislead when attribution is loose or the client has unusually strong demand. A company with one isolated need may be better served by a focused vendor. Riches & Saint’s model makes the most sense when the customer genuinely needs the whole chain and will share the data required to improve it.
The company’s latest public turn extends that logic. In 2026, creator-business financier CreatorFi announced a partnership with Riches & Saint, pairing capital with brand, content and campaign execution. It is a neat expression of the agency’s pitch: money can buy attention, but creative work decides what the attention finds.
Follow the work
The most direct view of Riches & Saint is its own output - the portfolio, social feeds and the founder’s account of the company’s early choices.