Influencer marketing is normally used to drive sales and introduce new products to the market. Influencer marketing as we know it started in 2015 with the Lord & Taylor case where they paid influencers to promote a new dress they had launched.

Influencers are as old as time. The earliest influencers were The Pope and The Queen, influential people in our lives, but then this developed to what it is today, after years of history. Thanks to social media, we get to follow the influencers we would like to see, like their style and trust their opinions.

It’s true that retail is full of options, but not every consumer is a pro shopper buying for clothes, this type of people rely on influencers and their style. They trust their perspective, how-to-style it, and the human warmth talking about the product and the details they like or dislike about it, contrary to what happens when you are in a store or scrolling through a website.

With 2020, all of us had it rough and brands in the retail industry were no exception, with stores closed few designers got their return of investment and here is where influencers play their part as retailers, they did what they do best and swayed consumers in to get them.

When choosing who to work with and what opportunities to accept, influencers have to think if the brand they will affiliate with, have the same values as them, and the image they have coped with what they are and what they do. Also, they have to ensure their honesty at all times because if an influencer is not trust-worthy, the partnership won’t work in front of the consumers.

Influencers have become a great source to find inspiration for outfits ideas and an easy way to find where to buy them, cool huntings, new stores to buy from, and sometimes they will launch cool merch or clothing lines that are just what we needed and this can become a threat for retailers.

Retailers have to find new ways of innovating and staying in the top of mind of the consumers, they can use influencers as a weapon instead of seeing them as a complete threat and new widgets for their web pages and add-ons to satisfy their consumers’ needs.