How Two Millennials Built a $6M Streetwear Empire on Instagram

This article is about an international clothing/accessories brand built around community, high quality products, and pure love of black color (yes, you read that right!) that is making over 6 million dollars of revenue a year, with less than 10 employees, selling in over 100 countries!

Interesting? Stick around and learn how they did it.

The story of Blvck Paris

Ever thought about making millions in fashion business? And discouraged by its massive giants sitting on thrones of cash and fame (well, you’re not alone👋). There is good chance that your competitors will eat you.

Sounds impossible for an ordinary fella to have a say in the game but two young pals found a way to do it. Before we start, lets look at some stats about their business:

Sounds amazing, right?! Lets see how they did it…

It started back in 2017 by Julian O’hayon and Thomas Johnston.

Julian is a French serial entrepreneur. He initiated his first company, a digital agency, when he was 15. He learned how to code and design websites. By the time he was 20, he had over 100 clients, for which he designed websites.

At some point he went all in for social media and started sharing about his passion for design consistently.

At the end of 2017, he had grown an online community of more than 100k followers via his Instagram account @anckor.

When he realized the potential of his acquired community, he started sharing his love of black. He started applying his personal black stamp to household brands.

Through posting images on Instagram, he put black out filter on everyday items.

If you scroll through his Instagram page, the first thing that pops into your head is his OBSESSION WITH BLACK:

I mean, look at this:

That’s the magic of it, he built the foundation of his brand by focusing on creating memorable aesthetic pictures that shout BLACK!!

For example back in the day he edited a photo of a pack of M&M’s and it went viral.

He was featured in Creapills in France, and on GQ and Vogue in Taiwan. Turns out, a lot of people liked his sense of style and color and that’s when the idea of Blvck Paris was born…

He teamed up with Thomas Johnston, a young digital marketing expert from Australia whom he met and worked with via past projects on Instagram.

Due to their strong focus on design and marketing, Julian and Thomas decided to trust a remote web developer for preparing the website for the launch day.

They continued as usual teasing their followers and promising them to launch Blvck Paris on a specific date.

But something went wrong…

The developer over-promised and underperformed and the website launch was delayed. The lesson they learned from that incidence was to take every possible subtle detail about their business under control, specially when starting a brand-new business.

Anyways, they fixed everything and co-founded Blvck Paris and launched the brand under Instagram handle @black

They reached 100k followers in less than two months of posting consistently. Then, they started by selling premium accessories followed by leather goods and then moved on to adding clothing.

Their first products were accessories. Their signature Tumbler and the famous Blvck MacBook sleeve.

The signature Tumbler was a huge hit for two reasons. First because of its luxurious and distinctive design and second for its actual practicality. It is made of insulated stainless steel that’s able to keep your liquids hot or cold for up to 24 hours!

Every product of Blvck Paris is personally designed by Julian, who engages with followers through his personal account on Instagram.

When a lot of positive feedback about a new product idea is received, Julian and Thomas order a prototype from their factory in Asia.

The products are designed between Paris and Brussels, where the Julian is based, and are produced in Asia before being shipped worldwide to over 100 countries!

They use social media as their main tool for advertisement. Instagram posts, Facebook ads, and Pinterest posts are the main parts of the Blvck Paris digital marketing strategy.

Since 2021, due to their ever-growing popularity, Blvck Paris has reached over 1.3 million followers on Instagram and opened more than 10 stores worldwide in Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, Miami, and New York City and they are growing rapidly at an staggering yearly rate of 450%!

Branding is the key

Blvck Paris is primarily renowned and indispensable due to their exceptional branding.

They don’t just sell stuff. It is about the incredible feeling that they give to their customers. They tend to convey this feeling through their logo, their extremely well-designed website at blvck.com (what a domain name!), exceptional customer experience, eye-catching visuals, a unique color theme, and memorable slogans.

If you look closely, branding happens everywhere.

For example, what is the first think that comes into your mind when you hear these three words: “JUST DO IT“? Well, Nike of course. What about “Think Different“? the answer is Apple.

That is true branding.

You know you have a strong brand when you don’t even have to explain anything or show anything, and your customers and even non-customers know you!

In the case of Blvck Paris, I can say they have nailed the branding. They sell a certain type of luxury and minimalistic lifestyle and they do it by providing everything their customers need to acquire that kind of lifestyle.

They regularly share free black-themed wallpapers on their websites that are being downloaded for over a million times by their enthusiastic fans.

They have also released an app called Blvckmoji that turns your iPhone’s keyboard to a black one, iOS icon packages, Adobe Lightroom plugins for creating black-themed pictures, NFT collection with over 9 thousand Blvck avatars, and a black home collection line of products.

Julian also shares a special Spotify playlist of songs with mellow vibes which he curates himself on a regular basis. This also compliments the Blvck Paris-inspired lifestyle that their customers have picked up.

Building community before building the product

You read that right! Community comes first. At least in today’s economy.

How many times have you heard about those poor entrepreneurs who thought their idea about a product they had in mind was so good that they spend all of their money and time creating it for 6 months, just to see that “literally“ no one wants to buy it or pay for it!

That’s because they haven’t validated their idea. They “think“ and “assume“ that people will like or need their products, and in most cases they’re dead wrong.

Well, you don’t necessarily have to reach that number of followers. But you have to at least gather a community of people and friends around you that are willing and thirsty for your products.

Outsourcing to the max

Julian and Thomas spend all of their time perfecting the design and branding aspects of their business.

They decided to not waste their time on areas they are not an expert in such as prototyping, operating and manufacturing, shipping, and customer service. They outsourced those parts of their business and it turned out pretty well for them!

You don’t need a lot of money to start

Although Julian and Thomas spent $80k early on for ads and their ecommerce website, through their interviews they have made it clear it wasn’t really that much necessary and their spending could have been cut. Today, you can have fully-functioning and nice-looking ecommerce store on Shopify for a few dollars a month and you don’t really need to spend any hard-earned money on ads at early stages of your business.

The part you should really focus on (and thank god it’s absolutely free) is to build a community on social media. So don’t waste your precious time and start right now!

Remember, success comes to those who embrace opportunities, don’t get embarrassed by obstacles, overcome challenges, and remain dedicated to their dreams. So keep pushing forward, stay hungry for knowledge, and never lose sight of your goals. (I know that sounded cheesy as hell, but its the truth!)