Last Updated on April 3, 2022 by
Over the years, so many fashion brands have positioned themselves well in the market, and Fashion Nova is one of them. Fashion Nova is an American fast fashion retail company that operates online and has brick-and-mortar stores in five different locations. It is the world’s leading quick-to-market apparel and lifestyle brand. It earned the title of the most searched Fashion brand on Google in 2018.
What Are the Sources of Fashion Nova Clothing?
Fashion Nova is one fashion brand that sells fast fashion for a lower price. The brand doesn’t deal directly with the factories but places orders with companies that design the clothes and then ship fabric to separately owned sewing contractors, whose workers sew the clothes together and stitch Fashion Nova’s label.
Fashion Nova has not published who the vendors are, but unfortunately, the Department of Labor filed a case against the brand because the workers were underpaid. The brand’s general counsel had a meeting with the Department of Labor, and after that, the Department of Labor concluded that the brand isn’t responsible for workers being underpaid. It’s the factories’ responsibility to pay their workers well.
The History of Fashion Nova
Richard Saghian is the founder of Fashion Nova, and he launched the company in 2006. He managed to identify the missing part of the women’s apparel market by introducing sexy clubwear and jeans to the forefront of the fashion industry.
Richard changed the fashion concept by involving consumers in the conception of manufacturing clothes and the delivery process.
He started his career in the fashion industry at an early age; he worked with his father, who had a retail clothing boutique located in Los Angeles. As time went on, he got interested in the fashion industry and opened his first store in Panorama Los Angeles, selling inexpensive ‘club-wear’ attire.
Fashion Nova was a women’s line brand, and in 2013 Richard launched the company’s e-commerce website. The company launched the Curve Collection in 2016, and in 2018 it introduced a men’s wear clothing line.
The company has worked with many Hollywood actors. The company collaborated with Cardi B in 2018 as it released a fashion line at a Party with Cardi event where Cardi B, Brianna Perry, had performances. The event and launch were successful, selling out as fast as possible.
After collaborating with Cardi B, many actors have collaborated with Fashion Nova, such as Teyana Taylor, Blac Chyna, and Christina Millan. In 2019, the company launched the second season of the Cardi B collection.
The company donated money in 2020 in collaboration with Cardi B to those who were affected by the Corona-virus pandemic.
How Fashion Nova Used Instagram to Dominate Fast Fashion Retail
Over some time, high fashion has moved from purely aspirational to somewhat accessible. Before, an average person couldn’t get their hands on haute couture, but high fashion became easier to reproduce in an affordable way to an average person.
Many media consumption and influence enable trends to speed up, and many fast fashion brands get gunning for the retailers. Brands like Forever 21, Misguided, Zara, and Fashion Nova pump out new clothes faster than their predecessors to grab a chunk of the market.
Fashion Nova had no interest in search engine optimization, yet it was one of the top five most-searched fashion brands. The brand bets big on Instagram and has the influencers’ power, and knows how to capitalize when the bets pay off.
Back in the day, people bought or made clothes bespoke to their bodies. With the advancement of the sewing machine and cheap factory labor, the middle class started to taste high fashion from small shops and, eventually, department stores.
Before the internet, brands like Zara and H&M became leaders in fast fashion by determining how to convert runway and editorial designs into inexpensive versions for the public in four weeks. Through the 1990s-2000s, the one-two punch of the internet and cable television sped up trend cycles and the consumer’s appetite for fresh looks.
How Fashion Nova Commanded the Curvy Bodies Market
New brands have been created to take a slice of the market when specific trends have gone underserved or utterly unnerved by the crop of retailers. Fashion Nova struck gold by being ahead of a trend and creating clothes for what was once treated as a niche audience. Fast fashion clothes are based on clothes from the runway, and it naturally trends towards smaller sizes for more minor, far less curvy bodies.
There was pressure from the public for plus-size options, and companies would offer them. Still, the brands adapted the fashion model-oriented designs into plus-size pieces and never into pieces that celebrated curves. These fashion brands ignored a considerable chunk of the market: curvy women who want clothes designed for their bodies.
Fashion Nova started to sell affordable club attire in Los Angeles. The blouses had a plunging neckline and were body-hugging. The brand focused on the demographic that other brands ignored, and it focused on stylish, well-fitting, sexy clothing options in the past.
Fashion Nova kept its clothing line affordable; although the company has mixed in increasingly expensive looks over the years, most items are still around the median price. The brand became a cult favorite after it expanded and started to include more day looks, like the extremely popular hour-glass- figure-friendly jeans.
The brand used different models with curvier bodies for the clothing line, celebrating body positivity, and the consumers loved it. By understanding, super-serving, and embracing the core consumers, the brand managed to quietly build a large, loyal fan base. The brand had sixty thousand Instagram followers before Richard launched the e-commerce site.
How the Brand Grew in Popularity
Despite opening four more brick-and-mortar, the brand didn’t become popular until 2013 when he took the store online, and the Instagram account proved there was a desire for the brand in the digital space. On the first weekend, the website sold out all the inventory.
Although Richard was late in taking the store online, he realized the utility of Instagram to sell clothes. From the beginning, the brand frequently posted about best-selling items. Besides, the brand releases six hundred to nine hundred items weekly, so there is no shortage of content.
According to the owner, it is vital to have a lot of different styles because consumers post a lot online and need new clothes. These days, many consumers don’t like repeating clothes.
The brands collaborate with Kylie and Kris Jenner, whereas Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney have been organic influencers for the brand for years. A post by Kylie yields sales worth fifty thousand dollars. That is the power of influencers!
Influencer marketing has played a significant role for fashion Nova because it makes more than one dollar of margin for every dollar the brand spends. It keeps scaling and investing in influencer marketing.
The real value of their Instagram strategy is a combination of tiered influencers and a brand growth pipeline for those submitting user-generated content. The brand has a massive network of influencers who often refer to themselves as brand ambassadors.
The brand reposts lifestyle pictures from the consumers that influence followers to tag photos when wearing fashion Nova using the #Novababes. The hashtag supplies a discovery channel for, at the very least user-generated content and, at most, future ambassadors.
