How Fashion Nova Used Instagram to Build a Billion Dollar Brand
4 lessons you should learn from the rise of Fashion Nova
The owner of Fashion Nova bought the most expensive mansion in LA for $141 Million. Here is how his early focus on social media boosted his company’s growth to $1 billion in annual sales.
1/ Recognize the Signals
Fashion Nova started as a Brick and Mortar store. The founder, Richard Saghian was familiar with the fashion industry through his father’s business.
Richard noticed that styles similar to the ones FashionNova offered were going for double the price online. It was clear that he had to open an e-commerce store for the brand.
At that time, many of his customers were posting photos of the brand’s clothes on Instagram. He decided to create an Instagram page to capture the traffic from those posts and direct people to his web store.
To encourage them to post more, Richard offered customers free products in exchange for tagging Fashion Nova in their photos.
Before launching the website, Fashion Nova’s Instagram page already had 60,000 followers!
Once Fashionnova.com went live, it sold out within one weekend!
2/ Build a Community
Many fashion brands treat their Instagram pages as bulletin boards to display their new releases. They don’t give much care to interacting with their followers.
Fashion Nova took its Instagram game to another level.
They created the #NovaBabes hashtag for customers to tag their pictures wearing the brand’s styles. Fashion Nova likes and comments on the post and features some of them on its account.
Richard bet on partnering with influencers that genuinely liked the brand and weren’t only promoting it for the sake of money.
When Fashion Nova first partnered with Cardi B, she wasn’t yet a signed artist. This helped the brand build a bond with the rapper who to this day promotes Fashion Nova’s styles.
Today, the company collaborates with a network of more than 3,000 influencers!
The agreement they have with the influencers is simple: Choose free items each month and post about them.
3/ Follow the Trend
Riding social media trends is Fashion Nova’s bread and butter.
The company goes from ideation to having an item on its website in a matter of weeks!
Here’s how they do this:
They go from concept to sample in <24 hours by partnering with local LA manufacturers.
Models are present at the office Monday through Friday to pose in the new clothes.
And to make it easier for the new styles to spread through word of mouth, they give them catchy names such as the Care For The Flare Sandals.
4/ Give the Customers too sweet a deal to say no to
Most of the collection is priced at less than $50 and there are always sales to sweeten the pot. I mean who can say no to that!
Richard built a fashion powerhouse by creating his own rules instead of following the conventional path. His key success factors: He catered to the taste of his customers and engaged with them on the platform they are active the most on.