The Strategy Behind Cider’s Rise in Sales with Gen-Z
In less than 5 years, Cider has positioned itself as a strong contender to ultra-fast fashion giant Shein, by not just focusing on speed, but also by focusing on speed marketing microtrends as they pop up. Their latest collab with Pop Mart, the maker of the infamous Labubus, is a testament to this strategy,
70% of Cider’s customer base is between the ages of 18-to-24-years old and sells millions of garments per month across 130 countries. In 2021, Cider raised over USD 130 million, and ever since revenues have increased sevenfold, and its app has been downloaded 50 million times. Unsurprisingly, TikTok is a key marketing channel for the platform, where Cider has almost a million followers, and dozens of brand partners. One of the key drivers of Cider’s success is their “Pick a Mood” shopping tool that encourages customers to narrow down their picks by picking a mood or aesthetic.
According to Cider’s founder, Yu Oppel, the tool is one of the brand’s most loved features, with over 50% of Cider customers using the tool to shop, driving both sales and viral moments on social media. For instance, a lacy skirt that was recently featured on Cider’s website under one of the moods or aesthetics in the front page, as well as on TikTok, sold over 4,000 pieces of that same item within the hour, very much adhering to their tag line “Fashion Starts With a Feeling.”
According to Oppel, Cider relies heavily on proprietary tech systems and algorithmic recommendations built in-house, as well as hand-picked pieces, to build the select the products featured on the “Pick a Mood” pages.
Furthermore, Oppel stresses that the Cider team is “chronically online”, spending part of their days engaging with the community, responding to customers, and following the people who their customers follow, across multiple channels, including Discord, where they have over 15,000 members.
“The Discord is a great way to get detailed feedback (…) But it could be as easy to just email some of your top customers and ask to do a Zoom call with them. We’ve done more than 1,000 one-on-one interviews, but even if you just talk to 10 people, you’ll probably start to see some common themes.”
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