Influencer trading model helps In The Style to an "outstanding" year

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Jul 27, 2021

Reporting “outstanding growth and strategic progress” is good. Achieving them in a “transformational year” on top of a recent IPO is even better. That’s how In The Style updated the market on Wednesday with a set of strong figures for the 12 months ended 31 March. And momentum has been maintained into the first quarter of the new fiscal year too.

The “fast-growing” digital womenswear fashion brand is certainly gaining traction from its “innovative influencer collaboration” model, complete with nine new influencers creating collections. 

It reported a 132% leap in yearly sales  to £44 million while direct-to-consumer revenue rose 108% to £36.4 million. Its minor wholesale ops did even better with revenues 353% ahead at £8.3 million.

Sales in the opening first quarter of FY22 continued the pattern and were 44% ahead of the prior year, “despite being up against the strong lockdown comparatives in FY21”, it also noted.

Last year’s adjusted EBITDA loss of £1.1 million was also turned into an ahead-of-expectations profit of £3.8 million this time. The adjusted pre-tax loss of £2.2 million a year ago also turned into a profit of £2.5 million.

There were other positives too. It increased the frequency of new product collection launches from two a week in FY20 to between three and four a week in FY21. That “supported progress across several operational key performance indicators”, it noted.

These included: website visits up 30% year-on-year; the conversion rate that improved 62bps over the same period; average order value up 10%; order frequency up 16%; new customer acquisition up 19%; and sales via its proprietary In The Style app “increased significantly” to represent 55% of total e-commerce sales during the period, up from 19% a year ago.

And there was the launch of a new partnership with Asda to sell In The Style collections across more than 100 of its UK stores.

No wonder CEO Adam Frisby was upbeat: “Central to our success is our differentiated influencer collaboration model that creates a strong customer connection, drives highly efficient customer acquisition marketing metrics, and gives us exposure to a broad range of customers.  

“We continue to progress well against our strategic objectives, driven in part by new initiatives including the exceptionally well received Stacey Solomon collaboration and our nationwide Asda partnership”.

And following the success of its IPO in March raising £11 million to support the group's long-term growth, he added: “I believe we are very well positioned to continue to build on our strong momentum and achieve our significant growth ambitions”.