Victoria Beckham, Tara Palmer Tomkinson and other celebs put a ‘rather English’ fashion item on the international map at William and Kate’s big day earlier this year.
Online accessory and jewellery retailer www.PrettyCool.co.uk (powered by www.ekmPowershop.com) saw a massive spike in demand for fascinators following on from the royal wedding, which pulled in an estimated 2bn viewers across all TV and online channels, world-wide.
Since one of the world’s biggest broadcast events ever, Caroline Rutter, owner and founder of PrettyCool.co.uk has seen lasting demand for all kinds of fascinators particularly from the USA, Canada and Australia. The online fashion store also had another boom in demand in the UK in the run up to Royal Ascot. The Royal Wedding certainly seems to have reignited our love for the fascinator in England, as well as bringing it to brand new markets abroad.
Caroline explains how she saw the first influx of orders to her ecommerce website from overseas: “On the general chat of the Disney Forum someone was asking ‘Why do the British wear hats on the front of their heads?’ to which someone else replied ‘They’re not hats, they are fascinators!’ And they placed a link to our site.”
Daily visitors to the site have more than tripled since the world started buying fascinators, post the royal wedding. All started by an overseas viewer who thought fascinators were simply ‘the British’ wearing hats on our foreheads... a wonderful and humorous example of viral marketing. Something you just can’t engineer!
International events like the royal wedding put a select few products on a global scale, particularly women’s fashion items. We know most of the designers’ labels worn by high profile guests have seen increased demand, Sarah Burton (Kate Middleton’s wedding dress designer) in particular.
Melisa Young from ecommerce provider ekmPowershop.com points out: “At ekmPowershop.com we have over 8000 online shops using our market leading platform in the UK alone, and it’s not the first time we’ve had a client benefit from viral marketing on a forum mention. Last year Speedy Models was linked to from Channel 5’s ‘The Gadget Show’ forum, after an item they stocked featured in the TV show. He sold over 500 units in a matter of days. It says a lot about the benefits of selling online.”
It’s hard to replicate a campaign that puts your brand or product on that sort of scale, especially for free. When an item appears in a televised event on the mammoth scale of a royal wedding, some retailers like PrettyCool.co.uk win big.
Great comments and agree that you either love or hate fascinators and we love them!
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