If you’re a teenage girl, parents of a teenage girl, or live around teenagers, you’ve probably seen Brandy Melville clothing, even if you didn’t know it. Founded in 2009 by Italian immigrant Silvian Marsan who moved to Los Angeles, Brandy Melville has exploded onto the teen fashion scene with its fast adaptation of trends. Although the company has become a ubiquitous part of middle-class teen girls, they do something very different from other popular teen girl’s brands like American Eagle or PacSun. Their advertising budget is set at $0 a year.
How did they succeed in a world where we are constantly surrounded by companies marketing themselves to us?
Since the start of its first store to its estimated revenue of $300 million in 2018, Brandy Melville has blended in in all the areas that they needed to, while making key changes that propelled them to widespread success. Through their unique methods of determining how to market to young girls, their ability to keep up with much larger brands through adaptability, and their balance between exclusivity and rarity, Brandy Melville has unarguably created a name for themselves, no matter how unethical critics may think their ways of success are.
Marketability
Similar to other California-style casual clothing brands like Hollister, PacSun, and Billabong, Brandy Melville’s Instagram feed is filled with pictures of surfer girls, all skinny and smiling at the camera in their vintage-style clothes. The Brandy Melville Instagram has approximately 4.3 million followers, and continues to grow. But what’s different about them is that this Instagram account is their only form of true marketing.
The Brandy Melville Instagram is the epitome of teen style, and many girls’ goals is to be posted on the huge platform. One of the biggest things that has developed Brandy Melville’s loyal fanbase is how authentic the shots posted are, compared to the professional photography and studio lighting used by other clothing giants. Even the models on the page are different from traditional models in appearance, being stereotypically pretty Caucasian girls that are unarguably attractive, but look real, like someone you could bump into on the street, and not just at New York Fashion Week. The ‘raw’ effect of their social media establishes a closer connection than one might feel with a corporate brand. In fact, Brandy Melville regularly posts open casting calls on their account, encouraging anyone to stop by and possibly be selected as a face of this growing brand. Although most girls featured on the page are in fact, Brandy Melville employees and models, their ability to make customers feel like they could reach out to the brand is something very different from the hashtags and professional-grade camera equipment of corporate giants, which will undoubtedly keep up their success as more and more consumers begin to complain about feeling distant from brands.
Many of the girls featured on this Instagram account are actually part of the product research team for Brandy Melville. The research team consists of 20 young girls ages 16-23, who could all pass as models, who help develop products and give designers a true understanding of what the target market is looking for. Take for example, Kjerstin Skorge, a 16-year-old from Malibu. She works with designers who ask her and the rest of the team questions in the back room of their Santa Monica store, ranging from color variations of popular shirts to even smaller details such as changing the size and position of a graphic on a sweatshirt.
This is a huge variation from brands like American Eagle, who’s design team is primarily mid to late 20 year olds, working in a corporate environment. Most of these employees don’t want to necessarily wear the clothes they help design.
Brandy Melville’s use of the target market in the development of their product is huge in yielding positive feedback and sales from consumers. Because they are able to directly interact and figure out what their customers want, they are able to stay on top of a fashion world that is constantly adapting and evolving.
They Do It First
Brandy Melville has faced heavy criticism from its line of clothes that usually only offers one size, which fits girls from a 00-4. This exclusivity has come under fire from moms, women, and girls themselves, claiming that these sizes only cater to the skinniest girls, and offer no representation for an average-sized girl, who is around a size six. However, this strategy of “one size fits most” is more than just a campaign designed to weed out bigger girls.
When designing a new piece of clothing, designers have to create various measurements for all sizes. However, this slows down the design process and also costs more money to produce, as machines and fabric settings must be set to a different size for every garment that is produced. Brandy Melville’s execution of fast fashion is propelled by this one size model, as it speeds up the stretch of time where a item of clothing goes from an idea to in real life. This method of production may be considered unethical and excluding some, but it is a factor that has helped Brandy Melville stay caught up with huge fast-fashion giants such as H&M and Zara.
Their smaller-scale model of fast fashion also propels Brandy Melville’s success, due to how much they are able to adapt, again similar to infamous fast fashion giants H&M and Zara. If you were to hand someone two pieces of American Eagle clothing, one from 2012 and one from 2019, they would likely be able to say with confidence that they are from the same brand. However, if one were to conduct a similar experiment with Brandy Melville, chances are much less people would be able to assert that they were from the same brand. Brandy Melville has made itself the chameleon of brands, going from 2012’s alien craze, to 2015’s obsession with low cut front tied tops, to 2018’s boom of striped everything. Compared to H&M, which is worth 18.82 B and is currently the #2 most valued fashion brand, Brandy Melville has merely a fraction of their production standards and means. If it were not for their one-size system in development, the company would likely be bogged down by slow production and development times, and not be able to pump out trendy clothing at a time frame similar to H&M.
Exclusivity
If you were to sum up Brandy Melville in one word, many would likely say ‘exclusivity’. Brandy Melville seems to be everywhere, yet, they only have 95 storefronts in the entire world. How do they maintain this fragile line between being available only to those that fit their demographic, and being unmarketable to most consumers?
One factor of Brandy Melville’s balance is their strategy of limited distribution. Brandy Melville is sold at only their flagship stores, select Nordstrom stores, and select PacSun stores. While this is enough locations that many of their consumers can drive around a hour and find a retailer, it is unlike the strategies of food service restaurants such as Subway, which opens up a new location whenever available. Because not everyone is able to access a location at all times, going to Brandy Melville is often regarded as an excursion by teen girls who love the brand. One high schooler at Skyline High School in Sammamish, WA is obsessed with the brand, but the closest location is about a hour away when there’s traffic, which there almost always is. “My friends and I, we make it into a fun girls trip. We take the bus up there, and we have lunch and take selfies in the store,” she says, while showing her aesthetically pleasing shots of the store. This exclusivity makes shopping at Brandy Melville an experience, not just Googling the nearest location and driving to get what you want to buy. Through revamping a traditional shopping experience of carts, baskets, and convenience, Brandy Melville draws in dedicated customers.
Another factor that Brandy Melville works hard to balance is its pricing of clothing. From a glance on the website, one can see that shirts start at around $18, skirts at $25, and dresses at $28. These prices are standard for teen fashion, and looks to be reasonable. However, as you add just a couple of items to your cart, the price seems to shoot up, although pricing of all these items is still the same. By pricing their items perfectly, one is able to spend a lot of money without even realizing it, because those numbers look so visually appealing. This pricing also seems to be cheap, but again, goes up very quickly, excluding lower-class individuals. While Brandy Melville has the look and appeal of a universally available product, that is not the case, and pricing remains just enough that it feels higher priced than fast fashion, but is not a huge investment like traditional clothing items.
Finally, the most stark difference from traditional retail companies, and arguably the most revolutionary, is Brandy Melville’s ability to capitalize on the controversy of their limited-size model. Brandy Melville manages to fit some people, but not all. Even though most of their clothing follows their one-size model, tops are made from stretchy, comfortable fabric that can easily be manipulated to fit bigger bodies than a size 0. The controversy garnered from articles such as one by USC student Rimi Sampath in a 2013 publication of the school newspaper The Daily Trojan, was widespread, and even made it on to large publications such as Racked, Business Insider, and Forbes, inspiring countless YouTube videos of girls going to a Brandy Melville store and seeing what really is up with the one size model. One of the most popular videos on this subject is by lifestyle vlogger Mia Maples, and currently sits at 1.5 million views. Although many brands are quick to issue apologies for anytime a customer is minorly discontent, Brandy Melville has provided no comment, leading new consumers to want to learn more about the brand, and not just about a scandal that prompted an apology. Although controversy can be damaging to a company’s reputation, this coverage acts as free advertising for Brandy Melville, and their unabashed defense of their tactics makes customers think that if the company isn’t ashamed of their actions, it can’t really be that bad.
In conclusion, Brandy Melville’s unconventional success is not just out of luck, but of carefully made decisions that break the mold of a successful clothing brand, positioning Brandy Melville to be the leader of a new wave of clothing companies, as traditional clothing retailers struggle with low store sales amid competition with online shopping. While you might love or hate Brandy Melville, it is obvious that these new, sometimes controversial methods have boosted the brand to a level of success that is the first of a no-paid-media, social media marketing brand, leading many business analysts and style editors to call Brandy Melville the world’s first hugely successful ‘Insta-brand’.
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