Five years ago, Roller Rabbit relied on being stocked at wholesalers like Macy’s and Nordstrom to get their products in front of new customers. This year, they called Lilly Sisto.
Since exiting wholesale a few years ago, the apparel label has embraced collaborations as a marketing strategy, mostly with other brands, like Starbucks or Moncler. But last month, it dropped a collection with Sisto, its first collab with an influencer in four years. The included pyjamas, loungewear and intimates featured plenty of nods to Sisto’s life, from the prints inspired by her favourite places — a croissant-covered tank-and-short set for Paris, pigs and horseshoes for Texas — to the launch campaign, which starred Sisto alongside her sisters, mom and nephews, who her followers recognised from watching her Instagram Stories. The personal approach worked: 38 percent of the customers who shopped Sisto’s collab were new to the brand.
“It’s presented us the same opportunity that wholesale once offered,” said Ed Bertouch, Roller Rabbit’s chief executive. “It allows us to do really exciting specific projects, reach new audiences and new customers.”
Lately, take a scroll through your Instagram feed and it may seem that every other post from an influencer is announcing a product collaboration. There’s Nordstrom, which released several collections with creators in the 2010s, debuted its first in six years in October, a tie-up between Wayf Clothing and Sara Walker. Jewellery line Ring Concierge teamed up with Coco Schiffer and womenswear brand Few Moda earlier this autumn. Reformation released five influencer collaborations this year, after a two-year break.
While pre-pandemic, influencer collaborations were a go-to strategy for both influencers and brands, the team-ups slowed down in the 2020s, as there were several high-profile influencer-designed brand collapses and controversies. For creators, too, the work required didn’t feel quite worth the squeeze, as they could make the same amount with a sponsored post or two.
But in the past half-decade, there’s been an explosion in creators, helping to pique their interest in doing so once again. And in today’s shopping environment, with inflation making consumers getting choosier about their spending, influencers offer a way to tap into a potential pool of customers who are still highly engaged. Influencer posts about their own products can also come off as more genuine — there’s still a commercial relationship between the two, but the influencer is more invested in their own collection’s success.
“From an efficiency standpoint for your dollar, the chances are that [the creator] is going to post about it more than she’s contracted for,” said James Nord, founder of influencer marketing company Fohr.
An Easier Partner
Fashion companies are finding that collaborating with an influencer has several advantages over teaming up with another brand.
When two brands join forces, it adds an extra layer of red tape. There’s two marketing teams, two finance teams, two CEOs — all with opinions and ideas about how to get things done. With influencers, the roles are more clearly defined from the get-go.
“We’re a business, we have a much bigger team, so it’s clear that we understand the product best, we will own the shoot and event production,” said Nicole Wegman, founder and chief executive of Ring Concierge. The collaboration with Schiffer, the brand’s first products co-created with an influencer, led to 25 percent more website traffic than previous team-ups with brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese and Malbon Golf. “What we really needed Coco for was the creative vision and to talk about it.”
Another reason brands pursue influencer collaborations is to expand in a new region, or get customers to consider them in a different light. The Arkansas-based department store chain Dillards, regularly teams up with influencers in the Southern states where many of its stores are located. But it’s also worked with Sisto and Los Angeles-based Sydney Silverman, which has helped the retailer broaden its e-commerce reach.
Plus, the personal nature of influencer content can be a boon for promotion. Working with a creator allows “a little bit more room for storytelling,” said Jennifer Behr, founder of her namesake accessories label, whether it’s an influencer explaining the inspiration behind a product or gifting it to her creator friends, who then will style it on their own pages.
The goal is to create products that appeal to the influencers’ devoted followers — and the typically far larger group who have never heard of them.
“There might be an 80-year-old woman that’s going into a store to buy something but she’s not on Instagram,” said Sisto. “You’re getting to put your name on something where people might not know you.”
What Goes Into a Good Collab
As with their own products, the most successful collaborations tap into what make the influencer partner unique.
Often it makes sense to let influencers take the lead in deciding what products to release. While they may not have design teams or manufacturing expertise, they do have plenty of data on what their followers want to buy, drawn from affiliate sales, TikTok comments and other sources. Some use collaborations to recreate pieces that may be out of reach for their average follower. For her collection with Few Moda, influencer Hannah Chody designed a tiger-print mini-dress similar to a $3,490 Oscar de la Renta number her TikTok commenters had loved.
“[Our partners] have total creative freedom,” said Alison Sambrook, director of brand partnerships at Few Moda. “They’re going to tell us the exact eight to 12 pieces they want to create, and we’re going to jump through every hoop we can to execute.”
Influencer collaborations can also push brands to take risks, which can benefit their business in the long-term. Jennifer Behr, for example, had never made a necklace before its first collaboration with the influencer Julia Berolzheimer. Behr said she was doubtful about the category’s potential. But with Berolzheimer’s encouragement, they included a necklace in the drop. Not only did it sell out repeatedly, necklaces are now the brand’s fast-growing category. For the pair’s second team-up, which launched this month, there are six included.
That freedom to experiment also attracts influencer partners who are creating products more for creative fulfilment than a paycheck. Berolzheimer said when you factor in the time and labour involved in building and promoting a capsule collection, the financial payoff “probably comes in under what you normally would get” for sticking with sponsored content.
Collaborations, in that sense, are something of a happy medium: They require a deeper partnership and give the creator a more tangible result than crafting an ad to run on Instagram, but don’t require nearly the same logistical heavy lift that’s involved in launching an independent company.
“It’s really hard having your own brand,” said Berolzheimer, who shuttered her apparel label Gal Meets Glam in 2020 and has since collaborated with brands like Lake Pajamas and Pottery Barn. “I far more enjoy doing collaborations … it scratches that creative itch of actually bringing something to life.”