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Originally launched as an influencer-led capsule for the 150-year-old Danish brand Birger Christensen in 2020, premium party wear label Rotate has quickly matured into one of Copenhagen s fastest-growing fashion labels. Now, the business is being put to the test as it looks to scale beyond its roots.
Run by Scandi fashion influencers Thora Valdimars and Jeanette Friis Madsen, its bold and affordable dresses and separates are stocked at 450 retailers including Browns, Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa, Bergdorf Goodman and Printemps. Birger Christensen doesn’t break out individual brands but sales across Rotate and sister brand Remain hit €30 million in 2022, just two years after the launch of both labels. Rotate’s sales grew 75 per cent in 2022 versus 2021, as customers across Europe, the US and the Middle East opt for its high-octane collections, featuring plunging necklines, dramatic cutouts to sequins and sheer fabrics.
While working together at fashion magazine Costume Denmark five years ago, Valdimars and Friis Madsen, each influencers in their own right, felt underserved by Scandi fashion, both personally and professionally. “We were visiting all these gorgeous Danish brands and being dressed for fashion weeks or dinner or parties but we actually never found exactly what we wanted to wear ourselves,” says Madsen. “Sexy dresses were not an option.”
Rotate got its start in 2018, when Denise Christensen, CEO of Birger Christensen, called Valdimars and Friis Madsen out of the blue and asked them for a meeting. “We thought it would just be about social media. But in fact, she asked if we wanted to cooperate and do a collaboration.” Originally meant to last one year, the first collection was so well received by press and buyers, Friis Madsen says, Birger Christensen made Rotate a permanent fixture in its brand stable.
In Scandinavia, women usually dress “to look cool for other women,” Valdimars says, in a nod to the pastel, high necklines and ginghams associated with the “Scandi girl” (perhaps from brands like Stine Goya or Cecilie Bahnsen). “We want to create a brand for women that want to be sexy, extravagant, maybe even a little bit too much,” she laughs. It resonated globally, and now bolstered by strong sales growth, Rotate is entering the Autumn/Winter 2023 season with new marketing strategies, from the metaverse and gaming to TikTok, after grappling with growing pains and learning from failed categories.
Fast growth has posed some challenges for the business. “In order to scale to [meet] the incoming demand, we had to work closely with retail partners to manage expectations and maintain market demands,” Christensen says.
As a brand that leads with occasion wear, Covid-19 disrupted Rotate’s first two years. “The pandemic created a puzzle that we wanted to solve,” says Christensen. Valdimards and Madsen launched Rotate Sunday in December 2020: a range of responsibly produced loungewear to keep the Rotate girl “glamorous but comfortable”. This allowed the label to adapt to global demand and survive the pandemic, before cashing in on the partywear boom in 2021.
The power of social media
Valdimars and Friis Madsen are not from a design background, which would have made it difficult to launch a brand in the past, the duo says. However, for them, social media made “everything possible”. Rotate is bolstered by a trifecta of Instagram accounts: Friis Madsen and Valdimars, who have 340,000 and 121,000 followers respectively, plus the brand’s own account, run by a dedicated social media/marketing team, with 291,000 followers. “I think for the team, knowing our styles so well and seeing us every day in the office, it makes it easier for them to create Rotate’s space on Instagram — it makes sense and links with our style.”
In the early days of the brand, Valdimars and Friis Madsen gifted Rotate pieces to mega-influencer friends like Mathilde Gøhler, Leonie Hanne and Irene Kim, to boost brand awareness. “They were really quick and so sweet to put on the dresses, and they would sell really quickly,” says Valdimars. The duo also got the attention of buying directors from Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa and Luisaviaroma. “With Jeanette and Thora’s existing industry community, we had all of these retailers in attendance from the very first show; each of them placed orders there and then,” says Christensen.
“Rotate comes up with fun and fresh new designs every season — they are on trend and especially now more than ever [post-lockdowns], our clients are truly in the mood for dressing up,” says Mytheresa buying director Tiffany Hsu, who wore and stocked the label from the first season. “Rotate is perfectly filling this desire.”
While they didn’t train as designers, Valdimars and Madsen are now focused on the design of collections, entrusting their team to handle the rest of the business, including Rotate’s social media. “Jeanette and I do the whole day from nine to five up in our office designing the clothes,” says Valdimars. The design language is extremely varied, rather than a cohesive “collection” you might see from a luxury label. This could be the winning formula. “If you look into our styles, we are not that fashion forward,” says Valdimars. “We re not trying to do something out of the box new. We stick to what we know works.”
Rotate is one of the top peer-to-peer rented brands on UK-based rental platform Hurr — an average dress returns 210 per cent ROI from rental revenue, says Hurr founder Victoria Prew. “Rotate offers daring, yet confident designs from structured blazers to sequin dresses. The signature styles in varying bold and bright patterns are ideal for any special occasion. Rental works best for dresses that stand out from the crowd.” For now, Rotate doesn’t partner with rental sites such as Hurr or do its own rental like fellow Scandi brand Ganni — but Friis Madsen understands the opportunity: “Even though we want to be affordable, some can t afford our dresses. Rental is obvious because then they can borrow it just for that one night when they wanna look extravagant.”
Adapting to market changes
Unlike many of Scandinavia’s biggest brands, from Holzweiler to Stine Goya, Rotate’s biggest markets are outside of Scandinavia: in the UK, Italy, US, Germany and the UAE. “It’s because the Danish market hasn t been that daring,” argues Friis Madsen. “Maybe Norwegian girls have been more open to showing a little bit of skin. But, in Copenhagen, the market wasn t there to begin with.” However, the Scandinavian market is warming up to sexy dressing, she says, and Denmark is slowly becoming one of Rotate’s key markets.
The strategy for Rotate has always been to focus on international markets, where there was an existing demand for the dresses on offer, says Christensen. It immediately stood out against local competitors for its bold and seemingly “un-Scandinavian” approach, she says. Valdimars and Friis Madsen continue to reach out to influencers from all over the world for Rotate, which has helped expand the brand’s global footprint.
Of course, not everything resonates the first time. The Rotate duo have learned from their mistakes and evolved their collections based on how they perform. “We want to take it to the moon,” says Valdimars. “We get new ideas every day. Some of them are crazy and not feasible at the moment.”
The duo launched a Ramadan capsule with Browns in March 2022, followed swiftly by Rotate Wedding in April 2022, after noticing a gap in the market for fun and versatile bridalwear for the modern Bride, says Christensen. Response so far has been really strong, Friis Madsen says.
As Rotate continues to scale Friis Madsen and Valdimars are constantly experimenting with new categories, like bags and jewellery, and aren t afraid to fail. “We just keep evolving.”
Key takeaway: Rotate seized a market opportunity for affordable, bold partywear, harnessing the founders’ existing influencer networks to boost initial brand awareness. With the support of Birger Christensen, the duo have been able to focus on testing new categories, while their teams explore new social platforms to continue to scale their business.
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