How to get your brand worn by a global megastar: Paris Hilton in Cargo Crew
Published in Smart Company - 26 February 2024
An interview with Felicity Rodgers, Cargo Crew founder and chief creative officer.
Cargo Crew are proud to be an Aussie-owned and designed brand, we ship our products worldwide to 90 countries and speak to a global audience.
While ‘uniform provider’ doesn’t scream ‘fashionista’ at first, once people see the quality of our uniform clothing items, color palettes and personalization options, the appeal becomes more obvious. Our designs are high-quality, stylish and functional, and with our global expansion, we’ve started leaning into even more fashion-led and innovative design so that we can appeal to a wider span of communities beyond the obvious - the creators, the makers, the workers, and everybody in between.
We see our social presence as a curated extension of our brand, and invest time in researching our ideal collaborators and like-minded creators, to build a partnership that feels like a natural fit (just like our uniforms).
Instead of offering free products to anyone with a following, we invest time in connecting with people who have aligned brands and values with ours. Chef Bae (aka Brooke Baevsky) is a case in point. A celebrity chef with a following of over 675,000 ‘FoodBaes’, she is reinventing allergy-friendly foods with delicious, health-forward and internet-viral recipes. She also has a love of pastel colors and comfortable, stylish jumpsuits and boiler suits.
One of our amazing crew members in our customer service team, is a huge fan of the celebrity private chef and her super successful Instagram & Tik Tok accounts. They suggested we gift her one of our pink boiler suits by reaching out on Instagram. Chef Bae loved the idea and fell in love with the boiler suit when it arrived to her home base in LA. Chef Bae started wearing our boiler suit in her content, which we gave lots of support across our channels and quickly built back-and-forth rapport.
“It’s always a winning relationship when they truly love your product and want to wear it, that’s what gives us the biggest kick and confidence in what we are designing and delivering.”
Within a couple of weeks of our chats with Chef Bae, she sent us a message: “Can I get another boiler suit for Paris Hilton?”. We obviously leapt at the idea (after some pretty excited happy dancing in the office) and quickly got a boiler embroidered for Paris right away. The filming was pushed back and pushed back, then Paris & Chef Bae shared their recipe for a Raw Vee GluFee DaFee Pumpkin Pie (Raw,Vegan, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free). That was a very exciting moment for the team.
While we knew Chef Bae was really well connected on the LA celebrity scene, we didn’t expect her endorsement of us to pay off so quickly, and in Paris, we found the perfect match - she’s synonymous with the color pink, and only wears the very best. We’re taking it as a testament to our high quality.
What do you think helped get it over the line?
We definitely had a bit of luck when it came to timing! It was so great we had built a relationship with Chef Bae right before she started her work with Paris. Paris is so synonymous with the color pink so it was a perfect fit style wise. I also think because we had built a genuinely supportive relationship of Chef Bae, she was very comfortable to suggest the boiler suit to Paris. This is also a testament to the quality of our products - Paris only wears the best!
Paris is a great ambassador for creating and amplifying brand through fashion. Everyone knows Paris’ look, and she is always on brand, curated, while celebrating her personal style. This is what we do with our fashion-forward uniforms. We help individuals reflect a cohesive, powerful brand statement, while providing them with the pieces that feel true to them and allow their personal style to shine through at work and play.
As a business using ethical manufacturing, with a sustainability focus and with a commitment to inclusive sizing, we take our brand seriously. For us, the formula for celebrity-endorsement success is a dash of luck and timing, plus a generous product offer, and a lot of willingness to go the extra mile for that personal, celebrity service.
Read the full article on Smart Company.
