How MVMT Bootstrapped their way from $0 to a $100M Exit in 5 Years

MVMT was founded by two college dropouts in 2013. They set out to disrupt a super competitive industry - the luxury watch space.

It all started with MVMT’s unique brand story, of how they went “from rags to riches”. It’s a story of 2 college dropouts that were $20,000 in debt when they started this business that quickly became one of the most well-known watch companies in the world.

In this case study, we go over several marketing channels that MVMT absolutely nailed - Facebook ads, Influencer Marketing,

Crowdfunding

In 2013, not a lot of millennials were wearing watches. Entry-level watches were expensive - starting at $200-$300 a piece. The founders realized that by cutting out the middlemen and selling directly to the consumer they could sell high-quality watches for $100, or half the market price.

The challenge was - no banks wanted to lend money to 23-year-olds. So Jake and Kramer turned to the only option available - crowdfunding.

MVMT with a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The two young co-founders were able to raise $15,000 in 2 weeks. And as the campaign caught momentum it increased to $300,000 in just 2 months.

Now that MVMT had 3,000+ backers they had money to invest in digital marketing. And the first channel they worked on was Facebook ads.

Facebook Ads

Thousands of DTC brands were built by advertising on Facebook. It was the new craze after Google Ads and it was very cheap, unsaturated, and effective.

First, the brand established a really consistent posting schedule and started using influencers for their images. Out of that consistency, they were able to get a few really engaging posts. So they took those and started running their first Facebook ads.

Here are the different ways they were able to hack Facebook ads:

‍-They used different ad formats to avoid ad fatigue (carousel, video ads, and more).

-They split tested every single element of their ads to get maximum conversions.

-They were one of the first brands to really highlight the luxury style, instead of focusing on the watches.

-UGC (user-generated images) played a big role. They advertised and shared images of their customers wearing the watches.

-They used super short ad copy.

Facebook ads generated a ton of sales for them, and within 2018 the brand was making $80M in sales annually.

Up next, influencers.

Influencer Marketing

What’s really impressive about MVMT is their go-getter attitude. When they decide on a marketing strategy they just go for it. They did the same with influencer marketing as they did with Facebook ads, they dove in headfirst.

It all started when the brand realized that influencers were more than happy to post content in exchange for free product. They reached out to content creators with 30k-500k followers and said “we love your work, we’d love to send you some watches in exchange for some content”.

At first, they were doing everything manually. They spent all day filling up worksheets and reaching out to influencers one by one.

Then, they started looking for influencer tools to automate the process. They started using Grin which is a comprehensive platform that automates everything from influencer reach outs, to agreements & terms, image approvals, and even integrates with Shopify.

They were able to grow their influencer channel 7X, receive 100,000+ discount codes and affiliate conversions, and have influencers create 39,000+ pieces of content.

Here are some examples of their influencer shots on Instagram:

Another strategy that MVMT executed masterfully is social proof.

Social Proof

Influencer images helped the brand build an engaged online community. MVMT encouraged their users to post images of themselves wearing their watches using the hashtag #jointhemvmt. To date, there are over 160k+ images tagged with the hashtag.

Besides images, MVMT used Yotpo to get their customers to leave reviews. They used the tool to send emails with in-mail review forms, where users could type in their review directly into the email, without having to go on the site.

This led to 30,000+ five-star reviews, in a very short amount of time.

Yotpo also let them display a Q&A section where customers could ask questions and quickly see answers to their most pressing concerns.

Recap

The real secret to the success of MVMT is how well they engaged their audience at every step of the journey. From the Indiegogo fundraiser to the UGC and influencer shots, their customers were the center of their marketing strategy. And that’s what really made them stand out of the pack.

To review, here are the steps they took.

1. Fundraising (3k customers)
2. Facebook ads
3. Influencers (39K photos)
4. UGC (160K photos)
5. Reviews (30k 5-star reviews)

Simple strategies that with consistency (and a great product) bore fruit. Need help growing your eCommerce brand? Hit that chat button and let’s connect you to the world’s best eCommerce experts.

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