What fashion needs to know about lemons8

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has already proven that it can build a social media platform that can tell what users are watching. Now, he’s created an app to influence what you buy.

Lemon 8, which ByteDance launched in Asia in 2020, is due to drop in the US in February and is slated to get a wider marketing push next month. The app is designed as a hub for product and lifestyle recommendations, focusing on areas such as fashion, beauty, home and wellness. With a main feed featuring mostly static, color-corrected images, the app recalls the early days of Instagram. Industry experts have drawn comparisons to Xiaohongshu, a peer-to-peer brand recommendation in China.

According to data intelligence platform Aptopia, despite the hype, Lemon 8 has been on a roll since March, with more than 1 million downloads in its first few days. The company doesn’t yet have plans to get brands on board, and despite its pedigree as a marketing platform, it doesn’t yet support communications. Some marketing experts say many brands don’t even know about Lemon 8.

But Lemon8’s visual and shopping-oriented nature should make it particularly attractive to fashion and beauty brands. And since it doesn’t sell ads, inbound brands need to get creative by partnering with up-and-coming influencers to promote their wares.

“We see some brands that have the money to try,” said Paul Wong, president of marketing services firm Belardy Wong. “If you can find scale, it’s a new channel to reach a customer.”

What is Lemon8, and why should brands care?

Despite the absence of shoppable links, Lemon8 feels it is geared towards helping users make purchasing decisions. Users describe their favorite products with text overlayed within photos, accompanied by captions, often lengthy, explaining where the featured items come from and why the creators recommend them.

Already, Lemon 8 has been recruiting fashion and beauty influencers, offering fees to join the platform. (The company declined to say how much they’re paying or how many creators they’ve paid.) Many creators who have joined Lemon8 — some of their own volition — are micro-influencers with audiences of tens of thousands or less. on other platforms. Creators with large followings may be hesitant to sign up for Lemon8 without a clear path to their influence, says Bellady’s Wong Wong.

“This is a good opportunity. [brands] With those creatives who are willing to make a small dollar investment,” said Stephanie Harris, founder and CEO of performance marketing agency PartnerCentric.

Having mostly smaller creators who focus on engaging a tighter audience helps reduce content on Lemon 8 as an obvious sales pitch.

“Most customers are comfortable with brands endorsing influencers. Influencers don’t want to be influenced by brands, says Nora Kleinwillinghofer, a partner in fashion, luxury and retail at consulting firm Kearney. “Gentle support…is critical.”

Some early influencers at Lemon8 are baking this ideology into their content strategy. Pamela Won joined Lemon8 in late March after seeing other creators talking about it on TikTok. Won, who is four feet 11 inches tall, now posts photos of her minimal style aimed at petite body types at least three times a day.

With over 3,000 followers on Instagram and over 2,000 followers on TikTok, Won has just 35 followers on Lemon8 and sees collaboration with brands as part of her growth strategy, although brands should note that not all of her posts are targeted. Car purchases.

“There’s a closeness to Lemon 8 because it’s still small enough to grow,” she says.

What are the complications?

There are reasons for brands to be wary of diving into Lemon 8, especially since parent ByteDance is in the crosshairs of Congress, where lawmakers have threatened to ban Tik Tok.

“Being the parent company of ByteDance and being a sister company with Tik Tok is both a blessing and a curse,” Harris said. “Brands should think twice about investing in a platform where the parent company is embroiled in regulatory drama.”

With that in mind, some brands may stop signing up for Lemon 8 before it gathers a large user base. But in doing so, experts say, don’t miss the opportunity to capture new audiences and shape the kinds of trends that arise on the app.

“When TikTok came out, there were mixed views on how much it was. [brands] He wanted to adapt it,” Kleinwillinghofer said. “For some brands that didn’t act quickly, they were a bit behind in how they were presenting their situation [customers]He said.

Lemon 8’s relationship with ByteDance, the way TikTok has adapted Chinese app Duyin for American users, may have a guide to how it treats consumers in the US. Lemon 8 has been downloaded more than 4 million times worldwide so far, according to data from Aptopia. Xiaohongshu, the app’s experts claim that Lemon 8 is simply based on the fact that it has been downloaded more than 19 million times on iOS devices in China.

“with [Lemon8] Being part of the TikTok family, they are truly set up for success,” Kleinwillinghofer said. “Bytedance knows what they are doing [and] How to Reach Western Consumers.

While there are no existing case studies of what success looks like for brands on Lemon 8, the potential for experimentation is low.

“It is also a way. [brands] To fall down a little bit and make a mistake in that situation,” Harris said. “Maybe not on a large scale.”