$400 Million | Entirely on Instagram

Background:

Unless you are completely disconnected from the internet, you‘ve’ heard of Fashion Nova. It’s the fastest growing women’s (now men’s too) clothing line on the internet. They sell affordable stylish bodycon streetwear. Celebrities such as Lala Anthony, Kylie Jenner, Amber Rose and Cardi B just to name a few wear are big advocators and patrons. What makes Fashion Nova different from other fashion giants is using Instagram to build their brand. They create fashion to inspire their customers to be stars, bold, and fearless.

The newest and arguably biggest internet trending fashion company was created by Richard Saghian. He often expresses that overpriced fashion is dead. He created the name Fashion Nova because he believes A Nova Star is always the best-dressed girl in the room. He believes his customer’s confidence is what truly shines and Fashion Nova emphasizes that confidence.

His fashion career began with his father in retail. The first Fashion Nova store opened in 2006 at the Panorama Mall in Panorama City, California. In 2013 he noticed that there were websites that sold the same products as his stores but at much higher prices. He decided to use the social media platform Instagram by posting pictures of his best selling items on models. Many of his customers used Instagram to show off their clothes, prior to him working with them directly. He had over 60,000 followers before launching the e-commerce site. When the website launched in 2013, everything was sold out in a single weekend.

Fashion Nova is taking the fashion world by storm because it’s not following any of the traditional fashion rules. They’re creating designs that fits every body type. Today they have over 14 million followers on Instagram and growing.

Instagram:

Photos of Fashion Nova models are all over Instagram: Uniformly curvaceous women squeezed into tight, strategically ripped jeans, body-conscious velvet dresses, and lace-up bodysuits. But the women — despite their resemblance to reality TV stars like Kylie Jenner — aren’t celebrities, for the most part. They’re influencers and rather famous influences I might add with several hundreds of thousands of fans and followers, if not millions.

The entire marketing strategy revolves around using these influencers and “Instagram Models” to promote their clothing brand. The strategy seems to be working. In just a few years, Fashion Nova has grown to a staff more than 600 people, who churn out 500+new clothing designs EVERY WEEK. Along the way the company has picked up 14 million Instagram followers and a stable of celebrity endorsers like Jenner and Amber Rose. Last year they’re online sales racked up an estimated $400 million.

Fashion Nova’s bodycon brand is built by obsessing over what people are wearing on social media, turning out affordable pieces inspired by the Instagram feeds of reality TV stars — often within days of the photos being posted.

“The concept is that the runways are dying, if you think about it, why did they have runways before? Because there was no internet. People are now looking at their feed for fashion inspiration more than they are the runways.” — Richard Saghian, its founder and CEO, told BuzzFeed News.

Fashion Nova’s presence on Instagram feeds across the country lies in its network of 3,000+ social media influencers — a constellation of fashion and lifestyle bloggers with tens of thousands of followers each, sometimes hundreds of thousands and even millions.

Social media influencers described their agreement with Fashion Nova as simple — a representative emails them about once a month to get their clothing order, the influencer picks out anywhere from 10 to 15 items and then posts a picture to Instagram wearing the product. No money changes hands — just free clothes. Each post includes a note encouraging followers to use the influencer’s discount code, which tracks their individual sales.

Rose Siard, a fashion blogger with more than 338,000 followers on Instagram, said that while she doesn’t make a commission on sales from her Fashion Nova code, she’s happy just getting a steady supply of free new clothes.

The Numbers: Production & Economics

Fashion Nova — based in Vernon, California, has grown its sales “exponentially” every year since it launched online in 2014 and estimated to be upwards of $400 million in 2017 — although Saghian declined to give specific financial or sales figures. While the brand doesn’t invest its time wooing elite tastemakers in the fashion media, it has its eyes squarely on the social web, updating its Instagram feeds every half hour and producing new designs at the pace of a scrolling mobile newsfeed.

“We launch 500 new styles a week, a lot of the big brands may bring 500 fresh styles in a year. But people don’t get tired of us.” — Saghian.

Fashion Nova is adding 500,000 new Instagram followers every month, and its “Curve” page, dedicated to plus sizes, has more than 2.2 million followers. Its fans include celebrities like Cardi B and Lala Anthony, who have all been spotted wearing the brand’s jeans, which cost no more than $40.

The company works with about 500 sewing factories across Los Angeles. About 80% of its products are made in LA, Saghian said, and those local factories help maintain a warp-speed pace of new releases — blazing fast even by the standards of the fast fashion industry, where giants like H&M now move styles from catwalks to store shelves in a matter of weeks, rather than months.

Fashion Nova’s social media team monitors what’s being worn online, sending trending styles to a design team that can produce sample products in less than 24 hours. Then those LA factories get involved, and depending on the quantities involved, the company can start selling the design within a week.

And it sells them cheap. Shoes are priced anywhere between $30 for a pair of ankle boots or heels to $55 for a pair of thigh-high boots. Dresses are as low as $28, and no more than $40.

“We’re trying to make the fashion industry play by the rules, I don’t think it’s fair for a brand to sell an item for $100 that they made for $20.”

For people living online in 2017, it’s a familiar kind of business. In the same way that a viral tweet now ricochets across the internet, inspiring news articles, videos, memes, and reaction posts in a matter of hours, Fashion Nova has built an operation capable of turning a viral celebrity photo into clothing ready for shipping, all at a truly frantic speed and done completely through Instagram.