Direct-to-consumer ecommerce business Snag, also known as Snag Tights, is one of the fastest-growing brands of its kind in Europe.
Marketing itself as a brand that offers 'clothes for every body', Snag prides itself on producing ethical, sustainable clothing to fit a wide range of body types and on centring demographics who don't typically see themselves represented in fashion advertising.
As Prema Chablani, then-Chief Brand Officer at Snag, told attendees at Ecommerce Expo 2025, "We … just began with a product that really worked. … What we decided to do was represent the people who were most let down by fashion."
From its initial product selection that focused on tights that fit comfortably, Snag has since expanded to sell lingerie, dresses, skirts, jeans, and accessories, and along the way, has built a highly engaged following of fans who love, promote, and sustain the business. Chablani explained how Snag has grown and nurtured its community, including how Snag's customers became the first models for its clothing, how community feedback has shaped Snag's marketing and product offering, and why experimentation has formed a vital cornerstone of the brand.
"When you go to a fashion brand's website, you see the same type of people … you see a lot of models that are all one size. You never really get to see yourself in a product," said Chablani.
She explained that Snag was founded with a desire to "change the way that tights were designed" and cater to under-represented groups such as plus-sized and disabled customers, ensuring that they would have access to tights that fit properly.
As a result of catering to demographics who rarely felt like fashion was for them, Chablani said that the brand came to stand for something more than selling a product. "We weren't just selling tights; we were building a community of people - and that's what made the entire difference to our brand. … It was [about] gathering a group of people and making them feel special."
Snag's founders also wanted the brand to embody ethical, sustainable values, ensuring that everyone involved in producing the garments was paid a fair wage, avoiding single-use plastics, using sustainable energy sources and drawing on recycled water for dyes. These commitments further endeared shoppers to the brand, creating a loyal following of fans who enthuse about Snag and want to connect with fellow fans.
Snag's community also provided the brand's earliest models: Chablani explained that the brand originally featured only user-generated content from Instagram (reposted with permission in exchange for free tights) on its website. Some of these early enthusiasts were subsequently invited to take part in official photoshoots for Snag - even if they had no modelling background.
This doubled as word of mouth for the brand: "More people then decided to tag us [on Instagram]; more people wanted to be Snag models; more people wanted to be represented on the [brand] page."
Chablani also highlighted that this forms an important part of Snag's approach to brand promotion: featuring positive, but not idealised, depictions of the people who wore Snag's clothes. "We want to represent the world as it really is; we don't want to create a world that's aspirational," she said.
"We want to show people what they are; how they can enjoy life; [that] they don't have to hide away … We wanted to show them that's what they could do by showing them their peers."
Chablani attributed a large part of Snag's community-building success to how responsive the team is on social media, sharing that Snag has a 12-person team solely dedicated to responding to customers.
"You can comment on an ad; you can comment on an Instagram post; you can send us a DM - there isn't a place that you will reach us that you will get ignored," she said.
She posited that in the "chronically online" world of prolonged smartphone use, people turn to the digital world for meaningful social interaction, including from brands.
"The point of the brand isn't just to sell stuff - it's to make people feel good about themselves. That has been [the goal] from the very first day," Chablani said. Those customers who reach out to Snag and receive a human, engaged response in return often become some of the brand's most loyal customers.
Snag's team has also created Facebook groups to fulfil this desire for connection with likeminded people within the digital sphere. "That blew up," Chablani said. At the time of writing, Snag has four different Facebook groups comprising of more than 50,000 brand fans in total, many of whom post every day. This online community-building has even crossed over into the real world with some of Snag's group members organising the brand's first in-person meetup in September.
Chablani underlined how invaluable these groups are to Snag's customer retention. "These people who interact with us in that way aren't going anywhere," she emphasised. "They're going to come back - when they need a pair of tights, they're going to shop with us.
"When we launch a new product … they're going to shop with us. They're super engaged, they're super active - they just want as much communication from us as possible and they want real communication." She added that this extends to Snag acknowledging when the brand has made a mistake and being transparent about the reason.
"They want to tell us, 'You messed up' - and they want us to say sorry," she said. "It's really open communication, and it's really friendly communication."
Thanks to this high level of engagement from Snag's fanbase, Chablani shared that the brand doesn't have to put a lot of work into determining what their next product launch will be. "We [ask the community]: 'What do you want?' And they tell us.
"Your customers actually know what they want from you … They know what's going to serve them best, and what they want to buy, so we ask them things [about] colours, type of product, all that kind of stuff."
This kind of outreach can even lead to unexpected discoveries about who really makes up Snag's community. Over the summer, Snag put out a customer survey that contained questions about customers' interests and preferred personal style, which ultimately received more than 160,000 responses. Snag used this data to categorise its customers into seven broad archetypes (such as 'goth', 'boho', and 'dopamine dressers') - not all of which matched up with the customer demographics they had historically been targeting.
"We were actually targeting a type of customer that we don't serve," Chablani revealed. "And we've changed our creative, we've changed … the way we present our products; we've changed the way that we design products to fit with [each] one of those archetypes.
"So, it's a customer profile but it's actually based off who we are working with … Everything is now centred around personal style: the aesthetic of a video, the aesthetic of a collection - it's been a really cool shift in the business.
"And actually, we've seen a huge difference with engagement on our socials, we've seen a huge difference with engagement with our ads; and with certain products, if we re-shoot them for the archetype they're supposed to be, they're gone in two weeks."
"My job is less about running the day-to-day and more about try[ing] brand new things that we've never tried before and see[ing] how it goes," said Chablani.
In 2019, Snag decided to expand internationally to gauge demand from other markets. "[We thought], the worst thing that could happen is that no-one buys from us; nobody cares," she said. "But this really worked." Initially Snag's international websites were simply in English with different currencies, but after the team implemented local translations, business boomed. Germany is now Snag's second-largest market after the UK and has its own customer success team and German-language video content production.
"What we do is we consistently experiment … I've tried 70 different projects this year," Chablani said. "I've tried so many things that I'll never try again … But if you don't do it, you're never going to get anywhere; and if you think about it too much, you're never going to get anywhere. … The worst thing that can happen is that it fails, right?"
Some of Snag's other successful ventures include branching out into connected TV advertising in the US this year, which the brand decided to approach by filming one "really cool ad" per quarter focusing on a different product each time. This didn't cost a huge amount and grew the brand's US business by 20%. "It's been such a game-changer," Chablani said. Snag has also succeeded in lifting its sales in London through ads on the London Underground.
Email marketing has been an unexpected growth area for Snag: Chablani admitted that at one time, "We actually believed email marketing is dead. We [thought], 'This is not something that matters' - but now it contributes to about 25% of our revenue."
At first Snag only sent product launch-related emails, but has since begun segmenting and targeting its emails, adapting the messaging to customers' personal style or to what they might buy next and encouraging them to experiment with new looks. "We really hit people at the right time with what they want to buy, and what we've seen is that our open rate hasn't really dropped. Our deliverability is really good," Chablani said.
"…There is a thriving community who do enjoy email. So, if you're using it right, and you're making it really special for them, you will get what you want back from it."
From here, Snag is planning to expand into WhatsApp marketing and also continue its experiments with influencer marketing, which was another new addition to Snag's marketing this year. Chablani admitted that not all of the influencers Snag has partnered with were right for the brand, but that Snag is now seeing very good results from those who are, netting a 3x ROI after factoring in the discounts that creator partners give out.
"If you pick people who are authentic to your business, it will work," Chablani said. "If you partner with an influencer just because they have a lot of followers, it's probably not going to do anything [for the business]."
Other near-future goals include making a success of TikTok Shop and improving Snag's content to ensure it stands out and serves the brand. "We're re-evaluating the way that we do content and [asking], "What do people actually want to know about our product? … We're trying to make it so that … our content teaches people something. That the content that's working for us at the moment: when someone learns something from us."
Chablani concluded with five takeaways based on Snag's successes so far:
Your brand doesn't exist without your customers; "If you talk to your customers and involve them, you're going to do well."
