Supreme, the Globally Recognized Fashion Brand that Doesn’t Spend a Dime on Advertising.

Derek Hawkins
4 min readOct 6, 2017

For those of you who know me personally, you know that I am obsessed with two things. All things digital (website design, digital marketing strategies, social, etc) and clothing (especially sneakers. On a pedestal sits one brand that knocks it out of the park in both categories, Supreme. Starting as a skate brand on Lafayette St in NYC on 1994, one simple red boxed logo has gained global recognition with stores in Japan, France, the UK (with their newest store opening in Brooklyn just last week), been seen on celebrities ranging from Kanye West to John Mayer, and has amassed a huge cult following. But, whenever Supreme is making headlines for collaborating with the MTA or making bricks with their logo on it, there is one thing you will never see them do. Spend money on convention advertising.

How do you even begin to advertise this anyways?

If Supreme is such a powerhouse, selling out products as fast as they can stock them in their stores or online, then why have you most likely never heard of them? One reason is that you aren’t what Supreme is aiming for. From the New York Times, Alex Williams writes “no offense, but if you don’t know about Supreme, maybe it’s because you’re not supposed to.” The brand has consistently been true to their core audience, young, urban skaters who spend more time kickflipping off the steps in Union Square or hanging out at their local bodegas than they do anything else. Understanding their demographics, they use a “high demand, low supply” business model as a means of both creating a garden wall and generating more and more interest from those outside of it. Young kids in SoHo touting the newest Supreme sweatshirts, tee-shirts, and hats are looked upon with envy, seeing as they either got one of the few products that will ever be made to look like that (once something is sold out, they never remake it again) or paid a lucidious price on the consignment market.

Remember that brick I was telling you about?

But where did all the excitement come from with Supreme? Supreme takes a guerrilla approach to brand marketing and advertising, letting their products speak for themselves through the use of exclusivity who buys their product and who advocates their product. Going back to some of their previous collaborations, Supreme has longstanding relationships with high notoriety brands (Nike, Lacoste, The North Face, Comme Des Garcon and of course, Louis Vuitton) and iconic artists who epitomize cool (Gucci Mane, Sade, Morrissey, Dipset and even Kermit the Frog). Tapping into the more conventional with the controversial and unique (Their most recent collaboration with Andres Serrano for example is a classic blend of the two), Supreme simply goes where many brands cannot and, more importantly, will not as a means of appealing to their fanbase. And their fans love it. Packaged together in short form content on their social channels, minute long videos or photos of their skate team in their clothes, they release everything organically and the buzz immediately arises.

6 figures worth of clothing and accessories in this image by the way

In short, why have a separate budget for spending when your audience (who have forums dedicated purely to them with long waitlists for entry) and publications are continuously talking about what you are doing currently and what you are doing next. No campaigns advertising your biggest collabs of the season, no large scale press releases, just a short announcement and a release is all they need to reach their already dedicated audience and spread buzz to new buyers who are coming in every season.

Neil Young for Supreme, seen in Harajuku district in Shibuya, Tokyo

There was a point when Supreme was advertising to a wide audience, but that time has long been through (even their old print ads go for hundreds of dollars online). While high end luxury brands such as Dior, Gucci, Prada and the works are still dumping millions into their print and digital ads as a means of remaining relevant, Supreme has etched itself into the stone pillars of coolness and exclusivity through remaining true to their brand. In the modern age brand awareness, even outside of the fashion industry, brands should be relying just as much on their identity than innovation and disruption. Supreme has never changed their business model, their persona and how they wish to operate as a business (who could easily be put into big box retailers, but what’s the point). Their success relies purely on what they do to provide their customers access to an exclusive lifestyle at a manageable price point while resisting any and all temptations to sell out.

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Derek Hawkins
Derek Hawkins

Written by Derek Hawkins

SEO Manager for @DominoDataLab | SEO/Growth Marketing | Writer | Programmer | Start-up Enthusiast

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Distribution by Status Code

Excellent! Some features similar to Screaming Frog

Nice article. The code snippets could be much more concise though. For example, you don't need that many if statements on the section for requested resource on your log_parse function. You're already using regular expressions on some sections, that's still a good regular expression use case.