Launched in May 2020, Ryan Muir Vintage (RMV) was an online clothing retailer specialising in vintage and retro clothing, (unsurprisingly) the venture of One Route founder, Ryan Muir. Existing during the initial COVID lockdown, industry competition was rife and Ryan found himself struggling to differentiate RMV from fellow vintage/retro Depop retailers. So, to extend the brand’s reach, Ryan took RMV to Instagram. However, this decision harboured its own difficulties, with industry competition being similarly fierce on the social media platform.

With RMV competing for attention on two platforms now, Ryan couldn’t divert enough attention to regular business operations, and things started to slip. Despite social numbers climbing, stock was moving slower (both in and out) and Ryan’s passion for the business was fading. So, in a last ditch attempt to revive the business, Ryan bought ad-space on a fashion-themed Instagram page, with hopes to direct the community his way and give RMV the social media boost it needed to foster natural growth henceforth.

What happened? Growth… until the post reached its time limit and was deleted.

But that sparked an idea—instead of paying others to promote my business, I can promote it myself. So, Ryan created One Route Fashion (ORF), a fashion-themed Instagram page centred around vintage/retro clothing and streetwear (which just so happened to be RMV’s primary demographic). By pulling inspiration from popular short-form content in the Instagram fashion space, Ryan was able to build a recognisable brand with over 15,000 followers in just a few months. With this success, Ryan regularly promoted RMV, building the business’ Instagram following to over 4,000 and Depop following to over 52,000. By implementing subtly conversion tactics and call-to-actions within his RMV and ORF content, the increased growth of RMV was reflected in the business’ profits as marketing expenses decreased and sales increased.

So, Ryan then had two streams of income and hadn’t changed his workload. Of course, additional benefits included brand deals with companies like ASOS and BooHooMAN. But, at the end of the day, this experience taught Ryan the most valuable lesson he has brought to One Route—great marketing can show itself in many different ways, so always think outside-of-the-box.