A single street style photo of Angelina Jolie catapulted a niche handbag brand into the spotlight. The oversized yet elegantly practical bag Jolie was carrying is from Senreve, a San Francisco-based brand dedicated to offering high-quality bags that blend fashion with functionality for women.
Senreve was founded in San Francisco in 2016 by Coral Chung and Wendy Wen, two Chinese-American designers who were formerly consultants at Bain & Company. Frustrated by the lack of handbags that met their needs, they decided to create Senreve.
The brand was established with the mission of blending the everyday with the aspirational, tradition with innovation, and design with functionality. Senreve aims to address the needs of professional women of all ages, offering bags that accommodate everything from phones and wallets to laptops and lipsticks, ensuring that every essential for various scenarios is effortlessly carried.
One of Senreve's most iconic designs is the Maestra bag. Named after the Italian word for "female scholar," its Chinese name translates to "Master Bag."
Even the small size of the Maestra can accommodate a 10.5-inch tablet. Its interior features seven meticulously organized pockets, allowing for seamless storage of items of all sizes. With its clear, stylish organization and high aesthetic appeal, this bag was a rare find at the time, epitomizing the perfect commuter bag.
Senreve, with its commitment to quality, practicality, and minimalist design, has increasingly appeared in the wardrobes of celebrities and Instagram influencers. Stars like Emma Roberts, Julianne Hough, Lady Gaga, and Chinese actress Zhu Zhu have all been spotted carrying the brand. This celebrity and influencer endorsement has propelled Senreve from a niche fashion startup into the luxury market.
While it's not uncommon for niche brands to adopt high-price strategies, transitioning from a startup to a recognized luxury brand and establishing a "light luxury" perception among consumers is no small feat. How did Senreve achieve this remarkable shift?
1. Established Luxury Brands Struggling to Sell
"In the history of luxury goods, the evolution of luxury always revolves around tangible products, and is closely tied to exquisite craftsmanship, technological innovation, and the development of aesthetics."
——The pursuit of luxury or luxuries
A sense of history is one of the most crucial qualities that defines luxury brands. Throughout history, many luxury brands have emerged, each leaving a unique mark that reflects its distinct genetic identity at different points in time. These brands mirror the thoughts, culture, and values of people across various social conditions and levels of wealth.
Luxury goods have always emphasized scarcity to maintain their premium status, with brands strategically targeting a select few. The higher the price of luxury items, the more they tend to attract consumers. However, despite continuous price increases, luxury brands are facing a sales slump.
This year, even the reigning luxury giant LVMH, which shone at the Paris Olympics, saw its revenue fall by 1% to €41.7 billion in the first half of 2024. Similarly, Gucci and its parent company, Kering, are struggling. Gucci's revenue plummeted by 20% in the first half of 2024, and Kering's overall revenue dropped by 11%. The decline in performance among these giants seems to reveal a cooling trend in the global luxury market.
Today's discerning consumers are increasingly seeking products that offer unique style and quality over traditional luxury brands, and are turning to emerging niche labels.
Modern young luxury consumers, rather than following specific trends, are more focused on differentiated aesthetics and are eager to find self-identity through personalized expression.
2. How Can Emerging Luxury Brands Establish Their Voice?
A brand cannot establish itself as a luxury label solely through high pricing. For emerging luxury brand Senreve, gaining user recognition and commanding a premium price is closely tied to its strategic positioning.
From the outset, Senreve has had a clear focus: designing elegant, minimalist, and functional luxury bags for a diverse new generation of women, strategically targeting the $500 to $1500 price range.
The quality and craftsmanship of Senreve’s products are impeccable. The bags are made from 100% Italian leather, treated with special water, stain, and abrasion-resistant finishes. The artisans assembling Senreve bags boast 50 years of experience with top luxury brands. It is this combination of exceptional craftsmanship and innovative design that justifies the brand's pricing and provides it with a solid footing to make its mark in the luxury market.
To drive consumers to invest in a high-priced new brand, word-of-mouth and social proof are essential. Senreve, as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, strategically leverages social media and influencer marketing to build its reputation.
From the start, Senreve gained traction through referrals among professional women in law, finance, and the tech industry. Senreve actively engages with customers on platforms like Instagram and partners with KOLs and celebrities to enhance its visibility and credibility.
Senreve is highly selective with its collaborations, focusing less on the sheer number of an influencer's followers and more on whether they represent the brand’s aesthetic and whether their audience aligns with Senreve’s target market.
In addition to its online presence, Senreve has organized numerous offline events both domestically and internationally, including product previews, pop-ups, and salons. The brand has also established a local exhibition space in San Francisco to maximize the efficiency of matching products with their audience, reach high-net-worth female customers, and build reputation and awareness.
Through these strategies, Senreve has successfully cultivated a brand image of high quality, practicality, and alignment with the modern woman's lifestyle, earning consumer recognition and willingness to pay a premium.
Achieving the level of prominence that Senreve has is rare for a fashion startup, highlighting the crucial role that social media has played in its rapid rise.
3. Female customers are the best brand ambassadors
Senreve's branding strategy is deeply intertwined with its social media approach. The brand places significant emphasis on the influence of endorsements by KOLs, leveraging social media resources to engage female influencers. This strategy effectively exposes, convinces, and encourages high-potential buyers to try and repurchase Senreve products.
Establish Senreve as the Quintessential Benchmark for Quality and Commuter Chic
Senreve understands that for consumers, endorsing a brand is essentially a form of psychological projection—it reflects the type of person they aspire to be. By collaborating with a range of successful professional female influencers, Senreve effectively projects aspirational values onto its audience.
For example, the Instagram account @lombardandfifth, with its 220,000 followers, is run by a fashion-forward influencer who not only promotes numerous clothing brands but is also the founder of a beverage company. This sophisticated and stylish professional blogger has a following that consists largely of fashion-conscious, aesthetically-driven, and high-purchasing-power working women, aligning perfectly with Senreve’s target audience.
The collaboration between Senreve and Veronica Levy has yielded impressive results, with their engaging video amassing 1,688 likes—far exceeding the account's recent average engagement. In the video, Veronica showcases various Senreve bags paired with her own outfits of the day (OOTD). The dopamine-inducing styling stands out, and the promotion seamlessly blends with her regular fashion content, maximizing its organic appeal.
Wendy Nguyen, a renowned fashion blogger with 1.4 million followers, is also an entrepreneur, embodying the brand's feminist spirit. Her audience closely aligns with Senreve's target demographic. Wendy's style is sleek and sharp, showcasing diverse styling possibilities for the products and resonating strongly with the brand’s vision.
In Wendy Nguyen's collaboration video with Senreve, set in the picturesque setting of a Bali vacation, she features a versatile light green saddle bag from the brand. The video effectively demonstrates the bag's dual functionality with the same dress, revealing subtle yet stylish variations. This engaging content has not only captivated viewers, sparking numerous inquiries about the product in the comments, but has also achieved 120,000 views, reflecting a notably high conversion rate.
Leverage Reels to Amplify Product Advantages
Senreve places significant emphasis on Reels content, focusing primarily on showcasing the bag's organizational features, styling options, and brand messaging. Through Reels, users can quickly grasp the bag's practicality, versatility, and the brand's established identity.
By leveraging Reels, the brand has effectively consolidated its Instagram content to prominently showcase product advantages and enhance brand impact, serving as a valuable strategy for others to emulate.
Reflecting on Senreve's success, the core lies in precisely identifying their target audience and key touchpoints. From this foundation, they have built a comprehensive system encompassing brand positioning, product design, store location, and marketing strategy.
Human emotions are not universally shared. Selling a luxury bag to someone who doesn’t buy luxury items might be met with complaints about the price, while someone who has a need and purchasing power for such items would find it a great value.
In an era increasingly defined by distinct groups, understanding who your audience is, what they love and aspire to, where they appear, and why they are willing to pay, becomes ever more crucial.
Becoming a popular product is relatively easy, but building a brand is much harder. Elevating a brand to a higher echelon requires both strength and time, along with a strategic approach. Like Senreve, finding the right partners is essential for gradually advancing from zero to ten, gaining user trust, and continually enhancing brand aspirations. If you want your brand to enhance its reputation and reach like Senreve using influencer marketing, we can help you find the right partners!
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