On September 26, Terry Donovan, head of marketing for British menswear brand Percival, sent an email addressed to the brand’s founder and CEO, Chris Gove, with a discount code for 25 per cent off full-price items that appeared to be for a select group of influencers. Except that it was sent to Percival’s whole mailing list.
Donovan and Gove’s phones blew up with messages and calls from friends, colleagues and even footballers (the brand often engages in partnerships with athletes, including free training sessions for customers) asking what was going on — had they been hacked? But had the email been inspected closer, one might have spotted that it had been sent from a mailing client, not Donovan’s own email. The message was no accident but a gimmick the team had sat on for months.
At a time when several other brands were discounting, Percival didn’t want to participate in the same way. The team believed it wouldn’t stand out. And so, it chose a voucher code, which felt a bit more “premium”, according to Gove, who had been figuring out “how do we, as a tiny brand with no budget, cut through?” The solution, he jokes, was to “throw Terry under the bus”.
The stunt, which resulted in a 76 per cent revenue increase for the day, with 58 per cent more orders than the previous one, is indicative of Percival’s unorthodox approach to building brand loyalty. Clever promotional tactics is one, but, as Gove notes: “The battle is to sell things at full price.” That was the impetus for launching its first-ever loyalty programme. Started last year, it includes an invitation to a private group chat that includes Gove, Donovan and CRM manager Tash Dabell-Jones. The WhatsApp group, titled “The Closed Circle”, currently counts 69 members. The brand also operates a private Instagram chat under the same name, for US customers specifically.
To be able to join the chat, customers were previously required to have spent about £2,000 with the brand, across any time period. That’s no longer the case and Dabell-Jones approves members based on their engagement with the brand (Percival didn’t specify how).
Those who are part of the loyalty scheme receive exclusive content, such as pictures taken by Donovan at photo shoots asking which colour Gove should use for a garment he’s designing. To begin with, the team would plan conversation starters to get discussions going, but now they flow naturally. The goal, explains Gove, was to humanise the business as well as reward fans with more intimate access.
Some of the Closed Circle have also become investors in Percival. In February, the brand launched a public crowdfunder that sought to raise £500,000. More than £1mn has been raised. Asked why Gove took this approach, he responds: “We’re a community-driven brand so we want people like that in the business. I don’t want another VC [venture capital] voice.”
London-based growth capital investor VGC Partners, which first invested £150,000 in 2018, followed by £3mn in 2021 and another £2mn in 2022, currently owns half the Percival business. Gove cited constant pressure to hit targets. “You make the deal with the devil when you take investments.”
In return for investing, Percival’s customers could enjoy perks such as discounts, first access to its events and even a dinner with Gove, depending on how much they put in. That being said, these new investors are unlikely to see any dividends paid out to them any time soon, with Percival saying it’s reinvesting any profit it makes. The brand says it hit £12mn in sales revenue last year and expects that to grow 5 per cent this year.
Percival might sound like the savvy kid on the block but it had an inept beginning. When Gove and his housemate at the time, Luke Stenzhorn, started the brand in 2010, they struggled to bring on wholesale partners. So, they rented a store in Soho in 2012. By mid-2016, they realised they had major cash flow issues and tried a crowdfunding campaign, but fell short of the £200,000 goal. Stock kept getting stolen and rent hadn’t been paid in two quarters. By then, the business owed £30,000 to various creditors. A few months later, a bailiff showed up to collect the rent and reckoned he could get £4,000 by selling the stock at auction.
The incident marked a turning point for Gove, who around that time made a fortuitous discovery: “The system we had before to sell stuff on was collecting everyone’s emails,” he says. “I didn’t even realise that I had 10,000 customer emails.” So, he hired a van, drove all the stock from the store to his flat, shot it all on his phone, set up an online store using Shopify, and then emailed all of Percival’s past customers. He made £30,000 in three weeks — £4,000 went to the bailiff and £5,000 was used to buy the brand and IP of the business. He also wrote off the debts of the old Percival by closing it, then restarted it.
While Percival is not yet profitable (Gove hopes it will break even for the first time by the end of 2024), the brand has amassed fans globally who buy directly from its ecommerce site. Among its top sellers are vintage-inspired knit polo shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies embroidered with novelties from the mundane (an open sardine tin) to the more curious (an octopus sushi chef). It also counts buzzy collaborations with sportswear brands Umbro and Prince, whiskey maker Jameson, and celebrity stylist Ilaria Urbinati.
According to a sales associate at Liberty, which stocks Percival, the ages of customers that buy the brand run from the twenties to the fifties. The linen suits, which Sadiq Khan wore to his declaration of office ceremony this year, have been flying off shelves, according to Percival store manager Luca Stephenson, as have its newly released jeans.
Percival’s Impressionist knit polo, which is covered in splodges of orange, white and black, has been a runaway success ever since Chris Evans wore it to the Lightyear premiere. “That wasn’t something that we knew what was happening,” Donovan says. It turned out Urbinati, Evans’s stylist, had bought the shirt off the website and dressed him in it, without the brand knowing. Sales of the shirt have since brought in £325,000 alone.
“The real celebrities that have a pull to make money, or move the dial, are really sexy male Hollywood actors,” Donovan says, indicating stars such as The Rock and David Beckham who wear the brand. “It’s a certain level of male who has the attention of men and women that then authenticates you to your buyers.”
Yet while celebrity support can help boost short-term sales for a product, the reality is that many of Percival’s customers are not taking their cues from big names. One member who is a part of the Closed Circle WhatsApp group hadn’t shopped in two months, but took an interest when another member raved about a recently bought coat. He ended up buying not just that coat, but 10 other things as well, spending over £1,000. As Donovan says, “our real influencers are the people that influence each other”.
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