How DTC swimwear brands are navigating a tough summer market

Summer is here—and the season’s usual onslaught of swimwear marketing is heating up. But for many direct-to-consumer swim brands, it’s a tough summer to make a splash. For one, the DTC swimwear market has become increasingly crowded. “Pre-pandemic there was already a lot of growth in new swimwear brands entering the market … and that trend has continued,” said Sky Canaves, senior analyst, retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence. Some of the new players are intimates and shapewear brands coming out with swimwear lines, such as Skims, Cuup and Parade. “Many of these DTC brands are targeting the same Gen Z consumer that’s most likely to be shopping for trendy swimwear—and to stand out they need to find ways to engage them through content that resonates, rather than blanketing them with ads,” Canaves said. Swimwear brands are also facing economic headwinds. “Apparel overall is facing a very challenging year across the board since it’s such a highly discretionary category, and the digitally native DTC sector is also struggling due to the combination of softer consumer demand and high customer acquisition costs,” Canaves said, referring to new privacy regulations from Apple and their impact on the Meta advertising ecosystem—something DTC brands used to heavily rely on for sales. And it seems less likely that some DTC swim brands will receive the large infusions of venture capital that were more common in years past. With capital infusions drying up, DTCs must figure out how to be more efficient with their marketing, said Nik Sharma, CEO of Sharma Brands, an investment and advisory firm specializing in DTC brands. That’s a significant change from the past decade, when there was “so much venture capital pouring in” that for a lot of DTC companies, hitting profitability wasn’t the focus, according to Sharma. Below, how some DTC swim brands are attempting to stand out this summer. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here Summersalt Summersalt, one of the largest DTC swimwear brands, is out with an extensive seasonal marketing campaign called “The Ultimate Confidence Booster.” An ad that debuted in May and is running on connected TV stars Lauren Chan, who drew headlines in April for coming out as a lesbian as part of a feature in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. Chan, a plus-size model and former fashion editor at Glamour, is featured in the campaign along with two other models who “have been a part of the Summersalt community for years,” Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin, co-founder and chief brand & digital officer of Summersalt, said in an email. Besides those models, the ad’s biggest star is what Summersalt calls its best-selling swimsuit, a one-shouldered one piece called the “Sidestroke.” The video humorously shows the models wearing the suit to feel confident at major life moments that don’t typically involve swimwear, such as interviewing for a job or getting married. The media buy also includes paid and organic posts on Facebook and Instagram. View this post on Instagram A post shared by summersalt (@summersalt) “We wanted to celebrate this idea of confidence, as it’s something customers equate with our swimwear time and time again … but we wanted to do so in a way that allowed us to lean into humor in a way we haven’t in the past,” Chamberlin said. It’s the first Summersalt campaign that was specifically created with CTV in mind, Chamberlin said. “We have run our Summersalt Body campaigns and others on CTV before but this idea was truly a CTV first moment,” she added. The agency on the campaign is 90 Degrees West which, like Summersalt, is based in St. Louis. Ookioh For the 2023 summer season, DTC swimwear company Ookioh’s marketing strategy needed to be two things: eye-catching and inexpensive. Founded in 2018, the brand is self-funded, Ookioh’s founder Vivek Agarwal said in an interview. “I realized that I really needed to grab some eyeballs, especially this year, because it's [currently] a pretty demoralizing market,” Agarwal shared. “Everybody’s struggling, that’s the vibe I’m getting,” he continued. So Ookioh sought attention by rolling out a revealing G-string swim bottom on June 12. “I realized … in early January this year that we really needed to do something different,” Agarwal said. “Otherwise, it will be difficult—especially because the costs for manufacturing are rising, so we have to increase our costs as well.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by OOKIOH (@ookioh) “Instagram is a black hole for me, I don’t believe in the metrics that much. So I figured this would be a better bet; and we’ll get better earned media or eyeballs or visitors to the site if we pull off the right stunt,” he said, pointing to the press attention that fashion brand Miu Miu got last year after it debuted a similarly revealing skirt. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Lexington Line (@thelexingtonline) Ookioh’s marketing play is carefully timed to roll out before the brand launches its first sunglasses and towels. Agarwal said he hoped the G-string suit noise will create a “snowball effect” for those two new categories. Outside of some paid boosting on Instagram, the social media effort will be an organic one, per Agarwal. Ookioh will also gift the suit to influencers, editors and celebrities. Parade Intimates brand Parade rolled out its first swim collection in March. Cami Téllez, Parade’s CEO, creative director and co-founder, said its swim marketing this summer is “less about traditional seasonality and more about tapping into the social and cultural conversations that our community gets excited about.” “We run secret flash sales exclusively for our Parade Friends or our VIP customers—they’re really fun moments where we can bring something new of value to our community,” Téllez said via email, citing a “Splash Sale on the first nice day in NYC” as an example. So it follows that, for its first summer swimwear campaign, the brand actively encouraged its community of micro-influencers to create content around swim, Téllez said. In turn, those “tens of thousands” of Parade content creators got first looks at the swim line, in addition to some of those creators receiving free swimwear. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Parade (@parade) Parade also created its own social media content to promote the swim line, Téllez said. Unlike Parade’s Re:Play underwear line that debuted in Target stores in March, Parade’s swim line is only sold DTC, but Téllez said the brand hopes to “expand to swim, apparel and other categories on the retail front soon.” Kitty and Vibe DTC swimwear brand Kitty and Vibe is using celebrity investors to create and promote three new swim collections. Comedian Nicole Byer, tennis player Sloane Stephens and actress Zoe Colletti all collaborated with Kitty and Vibe on their own collections for the brand. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kitty and Vibe (@kitty_and_vibe) Those celebrity-bred Kitty and Vibe lines are rolling out in May, June and July respectively, CEO and Founder Cameron Armstrong said in an interview. Although the brand was started in 2018, these three women represent the Austin, Texas-based brand’s first class of celebrity investors, according to Armstrong. “I would say that our summer months are our highest months for customer acquisition. Bringing new people into the brand—that definitely spikes in the summer,” Armstrong said. Having investors with large, engaged social media followings post about the brand can be a savvy financial move: They often don’t require extra payment for posting on social media about the brands in which they invest. Celebrity influencers can be notoriously pricey, with some stars costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single post. Although Armstrong declined to share whether the brand compensated its celebrity investors with anything more than equity to promote their respective new collections on social media, she said picking celebrities with significant social media followings was “100%” a huge factor. For instance, Byer has roughly 776,000 Instagram followers with an average of about 16,000 likes per post, according to Instagram engagement calculator Phlanx. “Where the environment is right now from a paid media standpoint … expenses on Facebook and Instagram for advertising have never been higher; so we really wanted to tap into communities that already existed with high engagement, and build relationships with these celebrities that could extend longer than one partnership post,” Armstrong said. Andie Kitty and Vibe isn’t the only DTC swim brand that has tapped celebrity investors to star in campaigns and create collections. Others have done the same, such as Andie’s 2021 campaign with its investor Demi Moore. This year, Andie’s summer marketing push centered around another celebrity: Mindy Kaling. In May, Andie dropped a collection with 33 SKUs called “Mindy x Andie” that was created in partnership with the actress and producer. The collection marked Kaling’s first foray into swim design. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andie (@andieswim) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andie (@andieswim) Andie is one of the larger brands in the increasingly crowded DTC swim category, according to Insider Intelligence’s Canaves. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

How DTC swimwear brands are navigating a tough summer market

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