6 Secrets Behind SKIMS' Success

The celebrity-founded brands built body diversity into their foundations and make a greater proportion of products available across sizes. While Victoria’s Secret is overhauling its image, fewer styles are allocated to fringe sizes. Despite fewer SKIMS’ products in 5XL than any other size, the brand has practically equal distribution between 2XS to 4XL. Inclusivity and longevity are also prioritized with a maternity range and the Fits Everybody collection, which boasts the ability to stretch up to four sizes, allowing consumers to wear throughout body changes.

Digital native brands Savage X Fenty and ThirdLove spotlighted the need for more diverse skin shades across the underwear market, offering a breadth of shades since their launch. SKIMS echoes this, stocking a variety of tones. Its bras and briefs are split by seasonal and core colors, with nine core hues available, including sand, ochre and cocoa. Diverse model imagery is championed across its social posts and campaigns. In the UK underwear market this year, Simply Be and Marks & Spencer released more inclusive ranges of skin colors to provide better consumer choice.

SKIMS is more than a shapewear brand. Despite its core focus on solutions-oriented garments, the label has forayed into multiple categories, spanning slippers, head wraps, bridal lingerie and sleepwear. This boosts its appeal to a wider target audience and captures market share from in-demand product areas and aesthetics. Underwear currently accounts for 48% of its category mix – this has decreased from 53% this time last year. Tops have grown in importance amid the loungewear and basics boom, rising from just 4% of 2020’s assortment to 17% in 2021.

Last fall, the brand’s launch into slippers illustrated how it has pivoted into winning categories, offering a faux fur slider in five colors that has witnessed several replenishments. Amid the surge in popularity for outdoors wear, SKIMS dropped an Outdoors Basics collection, tapping into the penchant for breathable styles and showcasing the versatility of core pieces. The brand further diversified its product portfolio by expanding into the kidswear market in November 2020 and offering mommy and me sets, appealing to the lucrative mini-me market.

Images via Instagram – SKIMS

Since launching in 2019, SKIMS has maintained buzz and interest through stocking a vast range of capsule collections centered around different fabrics. It has championed seamless silhouettes, propelling this aesthetic’s popularity into the mainstream over the past year. SKIMS has succeeded throughout the pandemic by offering comfort-focused materials, including stretch ribbed and cotton collections. The brand tapped into consumers’ thirst for nostalgia with its Y2K-inspired velour loungewear drop.

The brand’s drop-down collections menu online showcases the breadth of fabric options available. These ranges are split by essentials, including cotton, stretch rib and seamless sculpt, and limited edition lines, such as velour, summer mesh and silk. This strategy helps to strengthen SKIMS’ position as a basics yet trend-led label, and enhance its reputation as a lifestyle destination.

Images via Instagram – SKIMS

During the height of the pandemic, shapewear arrivals decreased by 30% YoY, with the cancellation of events causing interest to wane. The number of styles selling out online fell 14% YoY. However, as consumers dress up once more, July shapewear sell outs in the US have experienced a triple-digit boost, positioning SKIMS’ original products for further growth.

Kardashian has previously hinted at menswear products in an interview with WWD. Following Savage X Fenty’s well-received foray into size-inclusive men’s underwear, we can expect SKIMS future penetration of this market. The waters have previously been tested with a gender-neutral collection that achieved an 87% sell out rate, indicating demand is ripe.

Several SKIMS products already straddle swimwear, like the Jelly Sheer collection advertised for “poolside lounging.” A traditional swimwear range could be on the horizon with sister Kylie’s swim collection combined with the history of the family’s brand crossovers and Kardashian’s penchant for bikinis.

Period pants have entered the mainstream with investment from Victoria’s Secret PINK and Aerie, while adidas launched menstrual activewear. The market is expected to reach $495 mn by 2026, presenting itself as a lucrative and relevant opportunity for a diverse, female-founded brand like SKIMS.

Images via Instagram – SKIMS and Instagram – Kylie Swim

Contributions by Katharine Carter and kayla. 

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