Fashion Nova: How a mass market celebrating diversity conquers the world
If today one brand is destined to become McDonald's from the fashion industry, they will not H & M or Zara, and Fashion Nova. In 2017, FN entered the top Google search queries, overtaking Dior and Off-White, and became the most popular instagram brand for research InfluencerDB. We understand how the most curious mass-market-brand of modernity is arranged.
The creator of Fashion Nova, an American of Iranian origin, Richard Sagian, is the antithesis of the public image of his brand. He uses only LinkedIn's working social network and denies communication with journalists: during the twelve years of the company’s existence, Sagian gave three interviews (two by phone and only one in person). The entrepreneur agreed to invite the most influential business publication Women's Wear Daily to the office as if due to the need for personnel. "Ninety percent of people reading WWD did not hear about Fashion Nova, and we need people," he delicately hinted during the interview. But it seems he was a goof: in 2018, it is impossible not to hear about the existence of a brand. A small store on the third floor of the C-class mall has become the fastest-growing brand of women's clothing with a staff of 600 people and 13 million instagram subscribers. How did it happen?
Perhaps the main secret of Fashion Nova success is the real celebration of diversity. The brand celebrates all possible types of appearance and shows that a woman can feel sexy with any size, skin color and at any age. The brand supports a wide dimensional grid (XS-XL clothing and jeans 1-15), attracts multinational models of all parameters to the shooting and in every way develops a curve line with sizes from 1X to 3X. Such values as Cardi Be, Teyana Taylor, Nicky Minaj, Tabriya Johnson and Amber Rose translate the brand's values to the world, and the models with Fashion Nova are girls with various figures.
According to journalist Channing Hargrow, the brand uses niche-first tactics that are gaining momentum, which Coca-Cola and General Mills have already resorted to: it has a dialogue with an audience that is usually ignored (or misinterpreted) by other fashion brands - and gets an instant response in in the form of a growing turnover. Unlike most, the diversity for the brand is not a marketing-lure and not a forced cheek for the sake of the trend, but a real concept. The brand communicates with its customers on an equal footing and tries to please them in every way, while other brands (both democratic and from the “heavy luxury” sphere) are constantly accused of trying to win the hearts and wallets of the new audience through flirting with the theme (scandals on themes of infringement of rights - from Alexander McQueen to Barneys - are widely known).
In addition, the company rejected the usual fashionable system of "collections" and "seasons" and showed that fast fashion is not very fast, having introduced the term ultra fast fashion. The standard “two weeks from the idea of a thing to the store shelf”, once set by the Spanish brand Zara, is outdated. Fashion Nova takes 24 hours to turn an idea into a model, and another 24 hours to pre-order a thing. After a week, it becomes available in stores and online.
The amazing speed of work was made possible thanks to our own factory, an office with a photo studio and makeup artists and staff models that are always at hand. The company works on the system of drops and produces 600-900 new things per week, that is, about 35 thousand things a year. At the same time, the process of developing new things and filming is ongoing. The task of Fashion Nova is to track trends from the red tracks, social networks of various celebrities and street style shots, and then to provide them as quickly as possible to the #novababes multi-million army (hashtag of clients and fans of the brand) in the form of similar clothing.
Fashion Nova is not only its own production, but also wholesale purchases. It was not without indizent. Fashionista.com talks about girls who have discovered that Fashion Nova sells exactly the same dresses as other stores, but is twice as expensive. Despite the fact that it was the right of every store to buy things at the purchase price and sell at any mark-up ratio, the buyers had already raised the question of ethics.
However, the brand cannot be blamed for the high price tag: the cost of the vast majority of the brand’s items does not exceed $ 50. In addition, the store always has a special offer that allows you to buy items with a discount of up to 30% (just subscribe to its newsletter or login to your account via Facebook - promotional codes will haunt you around the clock). As Sagian explains, “high” fashion is dying: “Girls have enough problems - why should they bother with the price of a new dress? In addition, our clients need to constantly update their wardrobe: she won't go to a party or withdraw for an instagram in one dress twice, so we cannot offer one denim jacket - we need at least fifty. "
Expect a high quality or first-class service with an average check of about $ 100 is not yet necessary. When ordering things in Fashion Nova, experts call for a careful reading of the composition, as well as viewing the site’s customer reviews about the product: they often contain useful remarks - something can be more or less small or turn out to be more brilliant in life than in the photo.
Fashion Nova is a brand that essentially produces two types of things: a base in the style of body and skinny jeans and reckless outfits for theme parties or dates (for example, a transparent dress covered with crystals, or pants consisting of lacing). Another disadvantage of the brand is the actual delivery time: a fairly frequent review is irrelevant tracking number or time delays. Delivery to Russia usually takes about ten days. By the way, Fashion Nova does not practice a refund: you can return the item to the store, but it will be exchanged for a promotional code with a store credit (in the case of Russia, the refund price may be equal to the purchase price).
The main driving force and target audience of the brand is in Instagram. “Runway shows are dying. Does anyone read magazines? People need only exercise to quietly flip through their tape” - in this harsh quote by Richard Sagian - the quintessence of the marketing strategy Fashion Nova. The company works simultaneously with 3-5 thousand instagram-influencers of different caliber. Most of them do barter promotion - that is, for clothes (only 700 ambassadors pay for branded publications). However, the brand gained the status of a pop cultural phenomenon primarily due to two adherents: Cardi Bee and the Kardashian-Jenner family.
Hip-Hop-Diva Cardi Bee and Fashion Nova have been supporting each other since 2016, long before the release of the iconic Bodak Yellow. Cardi Bee is the ideal role model for clients of the brand: a girl from a poor family hit the first line of the Billboard chart and broke all possible music records, but she did not lose herself and her background. The singer constantly shows that you can look gorgeous in a dress for $ 30 (albeit with a Gucci bag). "I can buy fashion but this Nova fits designer", she chanting in her hit "She Bad" with YG. It is also reported that in November she will release a collection for Fashion Nova and will perform new tracks on the occasion of the launch of the line-up. You can watch the broadcast of the party online at fashionnova.com.
Fashion Nova's second popularity table is cooperation with Kardashian-Jenner. According to Sagian, one post on Kylie Jenner's instagram is converted into sales of 50 thousand dollars (although marked with the #ad hashtag). To the fact that the site is filled with photos of all five sisters in dresses and jeans for $ 30, added a curious experiment. Fashion Nova literally helps its customers keep up with the Kardashians. A day after the 21st anniversary of Kylie Jenner, the brand launched a pre-order for all the outfits that included the birthday girl and relatives at the festival. So the meme "The Devil works hard but @FashionNova works harder" appeared. Perhaps, a more logical product placement in 2018 cannot be invented (it’s not for nothing that Kanye West shows new Yeezy collections through Kim Kardashian's social networks).
Fashion Nova marketers should pay tribute - they work not only with girls who want to be like Cardi Bee and the Kardashian-Jenner family, but also rather nontrivial bloggers. One of them is a 90-year-old Kentucky resident Helen Ruth van Vinkle: she appears in mini-dresses and candid sets of Fashion Nova in her instagram with three million subscribers. Other non-standard advertising channels include an account with @nochill memes.
Active instagram position made the brand literally viral. Research of the marketing platform InfluencerDB revealed that the brand became the most popular on the social network: more users interact with it than with the top brands of the segment, including Zara, H & M, Revolve, Calvin Klein and even KKW Beauty. The conclusion is made on the basis of the indicator "earned media value", evaluating how users create their own content about the brand after interacting with the advertising. EMV, received by Fashion Nova, is 125 billion dollars: it is based on 611 million likes of posts where @fashionnova or #fashionnova is mentioned.
Having established itself in the segment of women's clothing, Fashion Nova began to look at other categories. In the summer of 2018, the men's line of the company, resembling a mix of copies of Fear of God and Yeezy, was born. Now 13 million Fashion Nova subscribers are waiting for the launch of a beauty line scheduled for the autumn. What's next - Fashion Nova Kids? For Cardi Bee and Kylie Jenner, this topic would be more than relevant. If no joke, the company is engaged not only in increasing profits, but also in quite noble undertakings. So, in 2018, Richard Sagian founded Fashion Nova Cares - a charity law firm dedicated to supporting women.
The biggest issue with Fashion Nova is overproduction. Fashion Nova is not a story about conscious consumption, and unlike H & M or Uniqlo, the brand does not work on eco-initiatives. However, despite the fact that both the website and the social networks of the brand are sharpened so that you spend money on new clothes, nothing prevents each person from individually stopping and thinking: do I need this or that shiny dress? And if the answer is "yes" - no matter what size you are, with a few clicks Fashion Nova can help you.
Photo: Fashion nova
