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In early April, just in time for Coachella, the Powers That Be put up new bus stop ads along my running route in Los Angeles. A series of movie-style posters, these ads featured women (or “Baddies,” in the parlance of the times) sporting various festival-ready outfits. These women weren’t smiling, and didn’t even appear to be having a great time—they were, after all, Baddies—but the outfits looked pretty cool.
These ads were brought to me, and therefore to you, by a little brand called White Fox Boutique.
Even if you’ve never heard of White Fox Boutique, or they haven’t yet made it to a bus stop near you, then you know about them. An Australian online fashion retailer founded in 2013, White Fox Boutique has done as much to popularize the ‘festival aesthetic’ of recent years as any human being, mammal, or corporate entity. They’ve also released a hoodie that’s officially made the leap from ‘wee bit popular’ to ‘viral phenomenon.’
If they can afford bus stop ad space in LA, then I would imagine that White Fox Boutique is doing at least as well as my local accident law firms and car insurance purveyors, which is saying something. What do the numbers say about White Fox Boutique’s performance?
EMV for White Fox Boutique from 2018 - 2023
That’ll do, Fox. That’ll do.
While not quite increasing its total in each consecutive year—kind of hard to do when the centerpiece of your creator strategy/arguable brand identity gets canceled by a global pandemic—White Fox Boutique has shown remarkable EMV progress. The brand has grown nearly 3x since 2018, closing our most recent 12 months of data (April 2023 to March 2024) with $155.9M EMV, a 33% year-over-year improvement.
You know where White Fox Boutique has improved year after year after year? In the number of people who want to get Foxy:
White Fox Boutique Community Size, 2018 - 2024
Whether or not Coachella is still happening, no one can deny the appeal of the right singlet. Here we have a >4x improvement in five years, figures that would be the envy of any brand out there.
No points for guessing that if White Fox Boutique’s community has improved year after year, so has its content volume:
White Fox Boutique Content Volume, 2018 - 2023
With a similar >4x improvement in number of posts, White Fox Boutique has demonstrated that its reach goes well beyond any single festival, or even festival season as a whole. And the brand isn’t slowing down: of that $155.9M EMV that White Fox Boutique collected from April 2023 to March 2024, roughly one-third ($49.0M EMV) came from creators who hadn’t mentioned the brand during the previous 12 months.
There’s no one factor to explain the strength of White Fox Boutique’s creator program: call it a savvy alchemy of Coachella, that hoodie, creator trips, and TikTok. Between April 2023 (a good month for a music festival) and March 2024, Coachella inspired $1.4M EMV across 123 posts, roughly half the hoodie’s $2.9M EMV across 305 posts. The brand also celebrated its 10th birthday in style, launching an anniversary hoodie and whisking away creators on a #WhiteFox10thBdayTrip, which yielded $1.0M EMV. October, the month of the celebration, proved White Fox Boutique’s strongest in the past year, with the brand pulling in $21.6M EMV.
One thing that really stood out to me was White Fox Boutique’s incredible two-year momentum in TikTok Impressions. When comparing the brand’s standing in various metrics from April 2020 to March 2022 versus April 2022 to March 2024, White Fox Boutique’s progress in TikTok Impressions proved particularly notable. Behold:
EMV, Estimated Impressions, and TikTok Estimated Impressions for White Fox Boutique
Clearly, TikTok is a major channel by which incoming creators and consumers discover White Fox Boutique. These newly minted brand fans consume a ton of White Fox Boutique content on TikTok, underscoring the brand’s impressive platform strategy. It’s no exaggeration to say that in addition to defining the festival aesthetic, White Fox Boutique is continuing to define the TikTok aesthetic. And whomever defines the TikTok aesthetic defines the world.
Apart from world domination, what’s next for White Fox Boutique? Well, as my colleague Cher recently noted on CreatorIQ’s Coachella recap blog, April 2024 saw the brand launch its #UpToNoGoodFestivalTrip, which coincided with the first weekend of Coachella. White Fox Boutique invited a creator squad to post up at The White Fox House, which featured a styling suite along with a branded pool (and branded floaties, of course). Posts mentioning Coachella generated $1.8M EMV, while #UpToNoGoodFestivalTrip fueled $1.5M EMV.
Thanks to an enthusiastic creator community, era-defining products, and a savvy marketing strategy, White Fox Boutique has emerged as an apparel powerhouse. With the know-how to sustain content creation even beyond festival season, look for the brand to continue to rise. There’s no stopping it!
Epilogue: White Fox Boutique Gets Stopped
Just after writing most of this blog post, I went for a run and found that the Baddies had been replaced. Where once the bus stops along my route were graced with their stylish presence, now there was nothing to see except public service ads about seatbelts and carseats, along with a note from the AARP. It all makes for a decidedly different aesthetic.
Anyway, the brand is still doing fine, but RIP to my Baddies. I’ll never forget all the golden moments we shared. Long may you vibe, Baddies. Long may you vibe.
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