Women's jeans are expected to sell for 20 million this year

By selling hand-made jeans through online channels such as Etsy and Shopify, the 25-year-old girl's sales revenue this year is expected to reach US$3 million (approximately RMB 21.6 million).

The girl used social media to promote her products and sold them for $12,000 in just a few hours . She then relied on the celebrity effect to increase brand awareness and boost sales of the $500 product. This series of online marketing operations turned her ordinary hobby into a money-making tool.

The profit from the modified jeans is huge

Bonvicini , a student at the University of Southern California, owns her own clothing line, EB Denim, which has been worn by celebrities including Taylor Swift, Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.

While in college, Bonvicini worked to expand EB Denim ’s business , hiring an assistant to help her process the orders she received through the website. She would spend her weekends at flea markets buying hundreds of pairs of jeans and building relationships with suppliers.

She added new designs to Levi’s jeans, increased inventory, gave them away to celebrities and influencers, and marketed them to classmates, increasing the price of her jeans from $10 to a more sophisticated product that sold for around $220.

Bonvicini buys a pair of jeans for about $20 and spends $14 to rework them, then washes them in a home washing machine. To keep up with demand, Bonvicini hired tailors to make custom jeans to her specifications. On her best day, she sold $12,000 worth of pants in just a few hours.

She held a wardrobe show at her sorority at USC and invited all the girls to post on her Instagram story, and they would get a 10% discount on the products at checkout , so a lot of girls would post and put EB Denim related activities in their feeds.

The exposure also brought EB Denim into the market of high-end retailers such as REVOLVE and Selfridges. When Bonvicini was a junior in college, EB Denim's sales revenue exceeded $1 million.

Celebrity effect drives brand popularity

But it was Taylor Swift who really pushed EB Denim to great success.

EB Denim went viral after the 2023 VMAs. Before the show, the Bonvicini team was notified by Taylor Swift’s stylist that the pop star would be wearing an EB Denim piece, but they didn’t know which one or when. Then, while she was out at a Fashion Week party, Bonvicini’s phone started ringing off the hook.

( Taylor Swift wearing EB Denim dress )

“I remember looking at my phone at 3 a.m. and someone sent me a picture of Taylor Swift walking out of an after-party in an EB Denim dress, and I was like, that’s so cool,” Bonvicini said. “The next morning, I woke up hungover and saw a bunch of Shopify notifications, and it was like $500, and I was shocked.”

After the brand became popular, EB Denim's sales began to soar, and it is expected to achieve sales revenue of 3 million US dollars this year.

Founded the brand at the age of 18

In fact, Elena Bonvicini did not expect the success of the EB Denim brand . She did not originally plan to start a denim brand worth millions of dollars. Handmade clothes were just her hobby.  

Every summer, Southern California native Elena Bonvicini would visit her grandparents in Wisconsin and scour the area’s thrift stores, sifting through the denim she would make into raw-hem cropped jeans for herself and her friends .

Originally, it wasn’t a business ; Bonvicini just enjoyed making tailoring and she loved having something that no one else had. That all changed when she went back to high school and someone asked about her shorts.

"I was stopped by a girl who was two grades below me and she said where did you get these shorts? I said I made them! She said can I have a pair ? Can you make me a pair ? " Bonvicini said.

Bonvicini had never sold clothes before, and she had no experience in pricing, so she set the price of her first sale at $30. But more and more girls started asking Bonvicini about the pants, and she realized she had a business .

Bonvicini was soon selling hundreds of pairs of repurposed vintage pants to classmates at her high school and other schools in the area, and every Friday she would hold sales in the gym locker room , selling each pair for $10.

Bonvicini would have all the clothes on the dressing room floor and the girls would come in and try them on, so it was a new idea to buy clothes from thrift stores and upcycle them and make them cute. ”

Even charging friends and classmates $ 10 to $30 for a pair of jeans, Bonvicini made a healthy profit.

"In the Midwest, I buy jeans for 50 cents. In some places, you can get a bag full of stuff for $8, and I can probably find 20 pairs of jeans in a bag . There's a huge profit margin in this business ," Bonvicini said.

When shorts went out of season, she asked her mother for a sewing machine so she could try to turn vintage boys jeans into something she and her teenage customers could wear. Her mom agreed to buy her a $300 machine, but on one condition: They would take local sewing classes.

As she was about to graduate from high school, Bonvicini was determined to grow her brand, EB Denim . She created an Etsy account on her 18th birthday and began using social media to promote her brand .

Rely on social media to assist

Bonvicini knew early on that the best way to get more attention for her designs was to get popular people to wear them.

She decided to reach out to people she thought were cool on Instagram , send them messages, find their email addresses, and get them to accept her designs . It would be a bonus if she could publish her own products.

Bonvicini ’s gifting strategy paid off. Not only did the teen founder receive replies from influencers and fashion icons like Chiara Ferragni and Danielle Bernstein, but she also surprised them by posting photos wearing her clothes .

The exposure proved to be an immediate boon for her business . “I started seeing traffic to our website going up and up and it paid off, and that ’s when I really realized I had something, ” she says .

Over the next few years, EB Denim continued to grow and added dresses, t-shirts and jackets to its offerings, which continue to be a favorite among influencers and tastemakers.

From Bonvicini's creation of the brand to the continuous expansion of products, continuous use of social media, and finding celebrities and influencers for promotion, the 25-year-old girl's efforts have paid off. In the eyes of the 25-year-old Bonvicini, she was really lucky at the age of 19 because many people liked her products at that time.

As the brand's momentum continues to grow, she hired a PR agency to help her expand her influence, and she reinvested the profits into the company, deciding to make it bigger. She doesn't want the company to be a money-making machine, but she wants the brand to continue to grow, so she will invest as much as she can in the future .

Female

EB

Denim