A double whammy of Instagram collaborations and going fully online has helped fast-fashion retailer Rebellious Fashion achieve explosive growth of 900 per cent in just a year.
Rebellious was originally a Liverpool market stall set up by the dad of CEO Samir Rasul which expanded into three shopping centre retail stores in the city.
A little over a year ago it took the bold decision to close them and concentrate on its online business, which was showing steady organic growth and shipping around 4,000 units a month.
Now based in Manchester, the firm also began to work with social media bloggers. The level of growth has been phenomenal, with 40,000 units shipped in November 2017.
“The big differentiator for us is our focus on blogger influencers who have a real interest in fashion and keen eye for it,” eCommerce and marketing manager James Wayland told BusinessCloud.
“They shop on our site and like our products and are keen to help promote us. If you look at the images on our website and the ones we use of bloggers, there’s an authenticity to what we do.
“It works really well for both us and the bloggers.”
Manchester is also home to online fashion giants Boohoo.com, Missguided and Missy Empire – but Rebellious is looking to carve its own niche in the market, according to Wayland.
He said that the extended reach afforded to the firm by the blogging community is entirely organic.
“One of the risks with using influencers is that some of them will invest in fake accounts and alter their profile to showcase a stronger social presence. This is something that our team consciously avoids,” he continued.
“We don’t buy likes, we don’t pay for followers and have no interest in doing so as it would devalue what we’re doing.”
The blog section on Rebellious’ website highlights the likes of @missellie_o, @saskiachelsea and @kadymcdermott, who all fall within the size range of Rebellious’ target market.
“Plus-size is a smaller market – but our intention is to move into that market and also the petite market, which we also don’t offer at the moment,” Wayland explains.
At present the fashion retailer ships 80 percent of its orders to UK addresses, but it is looking to expand its presence in America and Australia.
“They are two key audiences for us, with similar fashion interests,” Wayland said.
“We are also speaking to a number of international carriers that will offer an improved service and it’s possible we may be able to offer a next-day delivery service to the USA pretty soon.”