Influencer-Led Apparel Brands Seemed Like the Future, but Execution Is Proving Complicated

Julia Berolzheimer, arguably one of the world's most successful influencers with 1.2 million Instagram followers, started her brand, Gal Meets Glam, as a personal style blog while she was still in college. Within a few years, it transitioned to a full-blown content business. And in early 2018, it expanded with the launch of Gal Meets Glam Collection, a clothing line initially focused on dresses. The project, Berolzheimer said, was over three years in the making. Once the collection dropped in April 2018, it appeared to be an instant success, with items selling out within hours. In the two years since, Gal Meets Glam Collection grew, expanding into new categories, such as coats and pajamas. It also expanded beyond its initial retail channels—a direct-to-consumer website and Nordstrom—into stores including Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie and a number of independent boutiques. But last week, Berolzheimer took to her blog and announced that after just over two years, Gal Meets Glam Collection would be ending, at least in its current form. The decision "stems from the lengthy disagreement between how we wanted to build Gal Meets Glam and how our business partner felt it should be run," she wrote. The end of Gal Meets Glam Collection also means the end of the Gal Meets Glam brand with Berolzheimer at the forefront. The brand, she said, may be able to live on without her one day, but its future was unknown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, she said, she would transition her content business to go by her name. That means Berolzheimer is not just departing her 2-year-old apparel brand, but giving up the brand name she's built over the past 10 years into one of the best-known influencer brands. It's a surprising move for those who have followed her business. By all consumer-facing measures, Gal Meets Glam Collection was a smash success—the picture of what an influencer-led apparel brand could be. And she hasn't been alone in her success. [kickout id="1"] The rise in popularity of influencer apparel brands has coincided with the growth of the influencer industry at large. Influencing is big business, estimated to be worth nearly $10 billion this year, and it's easier than ever for an influencer to have a lucrative career through brand partnerships, affiliate sales and other methods of advertising. With the rise of influencers as public figures, influencer-fronted apparel brands have become a major force, a natural next step for the influencer industry's most successful players. Some, like Arielle Charnas of Something Navy, have even raised venture capital to fund their businesses. The trend of influencers launching apparel brands doesn't tell the full story and Berolzheimer's announcement has greater implications beyond her own career. Suddenly, what once felt inevitable—powerful fashion influencers getting into the product game—now feels uncertain. If Berolzheimer couldn't—or doesn't want to—make it work, who could? Running a clothing line is no small undertaking, and as the current retail landscape shows, it's a hard one with which to find major monetary success. As influencers' content-driven businesses become more financially fruitful, the prospect of a clothing brand may seem less appealing, particularly for those in the thick of it who see the difficulties. The rise of the influencer-led brand In a crowded retail marketplace, it's become increasingly difficult for a new brand to garner attention. But influencers aren't new brands—and that's exactly what makes them uniquely positioned to enter the apparel space. They already have rabidly loyal fan bases as well as a stylistic sensibility. Instead of starting from scratch, these apparel lines simply extend the brand an influencer has already built. "The amount of traffic that they drive to websites and product pages is astronomical," said Chris Vaccarino, founder and CEO of Fanjoy, a company that makes merchandise for influencers. "They can get their fans to take action." Several major players in the retail space have taken note. Nordstrom, in particular, is a champion of influencer brands, collaborating with the likes of Blair Eadie of Atlantic-Pacific on a series of capsule collections for its in-house label, Halogen, and serving as the launching pad and exclusive retail partner for influencer brands like Rachel Parcell. Amazon also teams up with influencers to create capsule collections released through its The Drop program. [kickout id="2"] For influencers, it's a chance to expand their brand beyond the corners of the internet they've built for themselves and create another revenue stream. Even in a digital world, a product line is a tangible sign of an influencer's success. "A lot of influencers think, 'Why am I selling other people's products? I should make my own,'" said James Nord, founder and CEO of Fohr, an influencer data and discovery platform. "But the reality is that making your own is so complex." That complexity comes in what consumers don't see. There are the licensing deals, in which an influencer partners with a brand or company, lending their name and offering direction on design but leaving the heavy lifting of sourcing and manufacturing to the seasoned professionals. Then there are those who begin their brand entirely on their own, handling everything from design to sales—a hefty lift, particularly for someone who is new to the product space. Others, like Gal Meets Glam Collection, fall somewhere in between: a brand led by an influencer with support from a wholesale partner that's more established in the retail industry. Even influencers who have started their own lines like Parcell, who initially launched her brand as a direct-to-consumer business, can shift to partnering with larger players, as she did with Nordstrom. And it's easy to see why: When it comes to influencers and legacy retail businesses, each has something the other wants. [kickout id="3"] "An influencer has brand affinity and credibility with an established large audience," said Amber Venz Box, co-founder and president of rewardStyle, an influencer monetization platform. "They often do not have retail experience, manufacturing experience. They do not want to hire these teams or work in these factories to get this done. On the other hand, the manufacturer has zero distribution and is coming under pressure because retail outlets they used to work with are no longer viable." A more complicated story Those reasons might bring retail partners and influencers together, but if their aims are at odds, they may ultimately drive them apart. For her part, Berolzheimer, who didn't respond to a request for an interview for this story, was candid in her announcement of Gal Meets Glam Collection's shuttering. She wrote that initially, she envisioned Gal Meets Glam Collection as a "a small, thoughtful collection" of about eight to 10 dresses a season. But demands from wholesale partner Maggy London pushed the brand toward monthly releases, with 30 or even 40 dresses per drop. "While the design control technically remained in my hands, I slowly felt as though the brand was getting away from me," she wrote. Berolzheimer may have had a vision for what she wanted for her brand, but partnering with Maggy London meant that certain business demands were inevitable. When an investment is made, a return on that investment is expected, and that means the influencer no longer calls the shots. "Any niche brand that has to scale, you have to give up a little something," Nord said. But giving up something could mean doing harm to the brand the influencer has worked for years to build. That certainly seemed to be the case for Berolzheimer, who wrote that she "felt as though my brand had become someone else’s business to do with as they pleased."[article_summary section="2"] "Influencers have to be eyes wide open going in," Venz Box said. "Is it going to bring value to your brand? That can be the consumer distribution this retailer brings, but it has to be coupled with quality. If I'm always talking about brands that do free two-day delivery, then my brand better have free two-day delivery." It's also a big adjustment to go from running your own small business to working with corporate and, at times, old-school partners. Jessica Sturdy, who runs the website Bows & Sequins, was one of the first influencers to get into the product business through a 2015 partnership with home shopping channel Evine Live (now ShopHQ). For Sturdy, the gulf was apparent in several ways. [kickout id="4"] Evine's customer base was majority plus-size, and the retailer ordered product for the release accordingly. But Sturdy's audience primarily looked like Sturdy, a straight size individual, so when the collection dropped, the smaller sizes sold out right away, leaving many followers without an opportunity to shop the collection. Evine's shipping policies had customers paying per item—a foreign concept to a generation that came of age in the era of Amazon Prime. The segment they scheduled her for on Evine aired on Friday afternoons, when her audience of 20-something working women were still at the office. "It was pulling teeth for me to even get extra pieces of clothing to give my blogger friends who would promote it for free," she said. "I just wasn't taken seriously as a 26-year-old blonde female, even though I had my finger on the marketing pulse of my followers."[article_summary section="3"] Is it worth it? For influencers looking to enter the apparel space, there's an "opportunity cost," as Venz Box put it. For every minute an influencer is working on their line, that's a minute they're not spending on brand deals that may be far more lucrative. And a career as an influencer offers unparalleled flexibility—working from home, for example, and setting nontraditional hours. Once a corporate partner is brought into the mix, that flexibility starts to wane. "We usually say whatever your following is probably about the amount of money you make a year," Nord said. "If you have 700,000 followers, you're probably making $700,000 a year. Do you want to spend 70 hours a week working on a clothing company on top of that?" Sturdy cut her planned two-year partnership with Evine short after one year and two collections for that reason. "There's just so much corporate red tape. I was like burning the candle at both ends," Sturdy said. "I was like, I'm one person, and I don't feel like you're a true partner." Berolzheimer will likely be fine—influencers, particularly those who started out as fashion bloggers in the early 2010s, often change the name of their websites, and followers ultimately follow the person, not the brand name. And even without Berolzheimer out front, Gal Meets Glam is still a nearly 10-year-old brand with a loyal following. Kate Spade New York flourished even after Kate Spade sold the brand, and the same could happen for Gal Meets Glam. [kickout id="5"] "That name is big enough and has enough equity to be considered famous," said Venz Box of Gal Meets Glam. "If it lives on without her, it will continue to enjoy the benefit of her association with it." Berolzheimer isn't leaving the world of product entirely. She said her new, self-titled brand will have "consistent, exciting product collaborations with some of our very favorite and most loved companies." That allows her to keep the door open to the world of product and design, but without the pitfalls of being a slave to the demands of a wholesale partner. Limited edition collaborations are likely the sort of influencer-branded product innovations consumers will see more of going forward, rather than new, standalone brands. For an influencer of Berolzheimer's caliber, putting all that time, effort and emotion into a business that wasn't being run the way she wanted it to hardly seems worth it, neither from a brand-building perspective nor a financial one. Nord estimated that Berolzheimer could charge $10,000 for a single Instagram post. To make that much money selling dresses would be a Herculean effort by comparison. "A lot influencers get into it and say, 'This is just not worth my time,'" Nord said. "It makes sense. It literally probably isn't worth their time."