Reporter | Chen Qirui
Edit | Lou Shuqin
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Fans can abandon Rihanna's fantasy of releasing a new album in the short term, and the singer and businessman who has been "not doing business" for many years may usher in her first listing project, and it is not Fenty Beauty.
According to the Women's Daily, Rihanna's personal underwear brand Savage x Fenty may go public, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both participating. Although neither the brand nor Goldman Sachs responded to the matter, sources said Rihanna had invested a lot of energy in the listing of Savage x Fenty and was currently learning the operating rules of the capital markets.
Savage x Fenty is currently valued at nearly $2 billion, and some analysts say that this figure will rise to $3 billion after the listing. Savage x Fenty was already a darling of the capital markets before launching the listing operation, receiving as much as $115 million from LVMH's investment firm L Catterton in 2021 and then $125 million from neuberger Berman and other co-investment institutions in January 2022.
Savage x Fenty is one of the most successful brands in recent years. After becoming popular with personal beauty brand Fenty Beauty, Rihanna co-founded Savage x Fenty with fashion industry incubator TechStyles Fashion Group in 2018 and broke away from it in 2019.
Like all celebrities, Rihanna brought initial visibility to Savage x Fenty. What makes her trajectory different from other celebrity personal brands is that Rihanna did not choose to bind the brand and personal image, and her focus gradually shifted to the backstage after the brand became popular.
For brands, Rihanna has become more of an operator than a brand ambassador. But Savage x Fenty hasn't given up on celebrity communication, choosing newcomers and influencers such as Mega Thee Stallion, who have become popular on social media, to promote it. Natalie Guzman, the brand's chief marketing officer, said the Savage x Fenty collaboration's leading opinion leaders reached as many as 2.45 social media users, while the brand also worked with more than 1,000 small and medium-sized bloggers.
However, although this Internet marketing model is sophisticated, it is not new, and new domestic beauty brands such as Perfect Diary and Huaxizi in China have all gone out of the circle with successful social media operations. And just as the popularity of new domestic beauty brands is inseparable from the background of changes in domestic consumer awareness, Savage x Fenty's popularity also needs to be put into the changes in the U.S. underwear market.
For a long time, the representative brand of the American lingerie market was Victoria's Secret, which occupied the market through extravagant offline shows and the way exclusive models were operated as entertainment stars, making itself part of the pop culture narrative. But around 2015, American pop culture was clearly tired of Victoria's Secret's former values, and excessively displaying a sexy image made Victoria's Secret be criticized by affirmative action organizations and gradually drift away from consumers.
Although underwear often exists as a hidden and intimate role, as the closest to the body, choosing what style of underwear often means choosing what kind of attitude to treat your body. Brands such as Savage x Fenty and Thirdlove, which have risen in this context, have created a sense of intimacy and diversity by offering a wider range of sizes and using plus-size models and ethnically diverse people in advertising campaigns.
But even so, brands still can't take the fierce competition lightly. Thirdlove, which had received multiple rounds of financing from Silicon Valley in the previous two years, announced massive layoffs during the pandemic due to poor management. Skims, a personal lingerie brand founded by reality TV star Kim Kardashian, also received high financing, and it rose like Savage x Fenty with the momentum of the star himself.
As a result, Savage x Fenty will adjust its operational strategy after completing its latest funding round. To reduce its reliance on online channels, Savage x Fenty is accelerating its expansion into offline channels. In terms of international expansion, Savage x Fenty is also interested in increasing its investment in the Middle East and China markets.