BEYOND MEDALS is a Swedish street-wear fashion brand that has had great success through its development of an innovative digital business model. BEYOND MEDALS was started by a group of professional Swedish snowboarders that initially focused on the production of snowboard videos. However, with the creation of their fashion and apparel brand, they have been able to thrive and grow significantly over the last 4 years.
Over the last 5 years, we have seen considerable change in consumer trends within fashion – as Roger Lay of Deloitte pointed out, “the role of the consumer has shifted from one of passive observance to enabled dominance” (Deloitte 2018). People no longer want to simply buy a brand, they want to interact with it and be part of that brand. Brands now need to have an ethos that resonates with consumers and BEYOND MEDALS have been able to achieve this with their target market. Part of the brand ethos relates back to the founders’ own alienation from the bureaucracy of the Swedish snowboard team in which they were members, and their desire to get back to the roots of what snowboarding meant to them. In a quote taken from an interview with Menswear style in 2019, one of the founders, Kevin Backstrom stated they are “very much into the freedom of the sport. However, the system began to get too serious” (Menswear Style 2019). This slightly anti-establishment ethos resonated with BEYOND MEDALS’s target market of snowboarders and streetwear enthusiasts who liked the laidback freedom idea that they associated with the brand.
This image of the brand was revolutionary and was seen to resonate with consumers in a new and significant way. The creation of the brand with its ethos can be correlated with a dramatic shifting in landscape of snowboarding. After the Winter Olympics of 2014, the impact of BEYOND MEDALS can be seen when the Gold medalist, Sage Kotsenburg, retired from competitive snowboarding in favour of making digital snowboard films (The Wall Street Journal 2018). The next winner of the same event in 2018, Red Gerard, also took a similar direction saying that “I want to go film snowboarding pretty badly and just take two years to do that” (The Wall Street Journal 2018). BEYOND MEDALS’s use of social media to promote this message has not only raised the profile of the brand and resonated with consumers, but also, building on this shift in the industry, has been a key factor in the company’s success.
According to Global Digital Report in 2019, the number of active social media users globally is 3.484 billion (smartinsight.com 2019). Both the founders of BEYOND MEDALS have large social media followings with Tor Lundstrom having 31,800 followers on Instagram while Kevin Backstrom has 96,800 followers on the same platform (Instagram 2020). As a result, when the founders started the brand, they had a ready-made audience and were able to make the brand incredibly visual to their main target market. As noted in the LiveArea blog in (2019, November 7), many people are now discovering brands and products online using social media platforms such as Instagram. In the case of BEYOND MEDALS, this use of social commerce was at the centre of their business model and has undoubtedly significantly contributed to its success.
BEYOND MEDALS’s target market is global and, in the same way that Amazon and eBay were able to reach a worldwide audience using the internet, digitalization allowed BEYOND MEDALS to implement an internet-based business model (Gänßlen 2017-2018). The statistics provided by the Global Digital Report in 2019 suggested that the number of internet users was 4.388 billion, and BEYOND MEDALS, by using an internet strategy, has reached far more potential customers than would have been possible through the use of physical shops (smartinsights.com 2019).
BEYOND MEDALS’s use of video marketing has also been a significant contributor to their success. This marketing concept is emphasised by digitalmarketinginstitute.com who recommend video marketing as a means of engaging with customers given its versatility, the way in which customers can be provided with a real-life format for the product and the ease with which ideas can be understood across multiple platforms (digitalmarketinginstitute.com). BEYOND MEDALS have managed to use this format by providing a video series on the website that is released regularly as well as an extensive gallery for photos. The ability to see the products being worn and used has undoubtedly contributed to the success of BEYOND MEDALS and video marketing’s contemporary and immediate “feel” has actually reinforced the values and ethos of the brand.
With the rise of digitalization, fashion and lifestyle companies have needed to adapt and create digital business models in order to thrive in the new environment. BEYOND MEDALS’s success has undoubtedly been down to a number of different digital techniques that have allowed their products to invariably sell out in a number of hours (menswearstyle.com 2019). The values of the brand have undoubtedly allowed it to resonate strongly with its customer base but it has been the use of social media, website optimization and the use of the internet to sell items that has been mainly responsible for the company’s extraordinary rise in such a small period of time.
References
• Deloitte. (2018), retrieved from,
https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/ultimate-challenge-fashion-industry-digital-age.html
• Digitalmarketinginstitute.com. Retrieved from,
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/the-importance-of-video-marketing
• S. Gänßlen, H. Losbichler, R. Gleich, S. Tobias. (2017/2018), Digital Business Model Innovations, Controlling in the Digital Transformation. retrieved from
https://www.icv-controlling.com/fileadmin/Assets/Content/AK/Ideenwerkstatt/Files/Dream_Car_GMI_EN.pdf
• LiveArea Blog. (2019). Retrieved from,
https://www.liveareacx.com/blog/5-digital-trends-reshaping-the-business-of-fashion/
• Mens Style. (2019). Retrieved from.
https://www.menswearstyle.co.uk/2019/10/11/introducing-beyond-medals/8752
• Instagram. Retrieved from,
https://www.instagram.com/backstromkevin/?hl=en
• Instagram. Retrieved from,
https://www.instagram.com/torlundstrom/?hl=en
• Smartinsight.com (2019) Retrieved from,
https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
• The Wall Street Journal (2018) Retrieved from,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-star-snowboarders-dilemma-embrace-the-olympic-stage-or-leave-it-for-the-backcountry-1518519375
Edmund Slimmon's Blog 
It is a very interesting blog post and I enjoy reading this piece as this is undoubtedly a new brand to me.
The use of the internet and social media is generally a must to all firms that sell products to customers. In your blog, you mentioned BEYOND MEDALS’s right use of different social media and videos which capture a huge number of consumers in a short period of time and successfully launch the brand. This reminds me of “How social networks influence 74% of shoppers for their purchasing decisions today” (Roberto Garvin, 2019) which stated that social media is highly influential to consumers’ decisions in which 78% consumers are influenced by social media (Forbes, 2019), however, business should always choose the right platforms and factors which determine the degree of success. BEYOND MEDALS’s current digital model is patriating their image as professional skaters and mainly focus on YouTube and Instagram and the use of influencers can be extremely useful in building brand awareness and motivating more purchases on these platforms as their voice is valued among their social groups. Do you think the use of influencers can be suggested to BEYOND MEDALS? And which influencers will you recommend?
Reference:
How social networks influence 74% of shoppers for their purchasing decisions today
https://awario.com/blog/how-social-networks-influence-74-of-shoppers-for-their-purchasing-decisions-today/
Are Brands Wielding More Influence In Social Media Than We Thought?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/05/07/are-brands-wielding-more-influence-in-social-media-than-we-thought/#18578f0b71e1
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Hey Edmund, I really enjoyed reading this. It’s great to see the influence of the new digital age alongside the fashion industry. Also, it is great to see an up and coming clothing company utilising social media to aid its growing success. However, do you think that they lose a large portion of potential customers because they do not have physical stores. I say this because customers may miss the aspect of a traditional shop. Do you think this is something they should consider? Perhaps even one store would do the company justice. Moreover, I think it’s brilliant the way the company uses video ,marketing to give its customers an insight into the products. However bigger clothing brands are adopting the use of augmented reality, do you think this is something that Beyond medals can use in the future?
Check this out if you get a minute!- https://arpost.co/2019/02/11/how-augmented-reality-is-redefining-the-fashion-industry/
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Hey Edmund, I really enjoyed reading this. It’s great to see the influence of the new digital age alongside the fashion industry. Also, it is great to see an up and coming clothing company utilising social media to aid its growing success. However, do you think that they lose a large portion of potential customers because they do not have physical stores. I say this because customers may miss the aspect of a traditional shop. Do you think this is something they should consider? Perhaps even one store would do the company justice. Moreover, I think it’s brilliant the way the company uses video marketing to give its customers an insight into the products. However bigger clothing brands are adopting the use of augmented reality, do you think this is something that Beyond medals can use in the future?
Check this out if you get a minute!- https://arpost.co/2019/02/11/how-augmented-reality-is-redefining-the-fashion-industry/
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I am glad you enjoyed it, I think the lack of physical stores does mean that the brand misses out on a large proportion of customers, especially in their home country of Sweden. It is definitely something they should look to introduce in the future, however, i think it currently comes down to the cost attached to it. With their customer base being very much on a global scale, investing within a store location as opposed to a wider variety of products, for example, would not be favorable at this current time. Also, given their snowboard commitments, the business is very much a second thought at the moment and having to factor in the extra money and costs as well as time to run a store would not be realistic at this point.
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