Paid advertising on Google, Facebook and other social media no longer provides the obvious path to growth it once did for direct-to-consumer brands. Fashion entrepreneurs need a new playbook to launch, scale and differentiate their brands, as they face new regulations and rising costs of performance marketing. Brands like Gymshark, Hodinkee, Mejuri and Parade show market share can be captured by finding a niche positioning and focusing on brand-building basics.

“We’ve seen a complete paradigm shift around brands … it’s about building something with the same emotional range and values as an actual person,” said Cami Téllez, chief executive, founder and creative director of inclusive underwear start-up Parade.

Téllez and Ben Clymer, founder of watch blog-turned-marketplace Hodinkee, join BoF’s Cathaleen Chen on the heels of releasing her case study “Building a DTC Challenger Brand,” to discuss how they leveraged community, content and data to build their brands.

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