DEAD Studios: Kylie Jenner Spotted Wearing Australian Streetwear

A beautiful young model steps out of her house, decked out in street wear. Camera flashes start going off incessantly, making it hard to get a view of her outfit. We make out a ‘D’, and ‘E’, and an Stu written down the leg of her pants before she’s whisked away by bodyguards.

It’s none other than Kylie Jenner, a star shining rather brightly right now. And it was enough of a glance to see that she was wearing DEAD Studios, a bold Australian streetwear brand that takes all this in stride - it’s really just another day, another high profile sighting of their brand on the street.

DEAD Studios was started by Sam Moore in 2013, a talented designer and industry expert who founded the label after the demands of his previous design job pretty much wiped out his creative freedom.

DEAD Studios finds their target market in both men and women customers aged 16-30. They offer unisex apparel (now also branching out into a women’s line called August, due to the 47% of customers who are women) with a luxe feel, capturing a rebellious spirit with their youth streetwear lines.

They’re exploding on the scene right now - Sam started working on the brand full time last year and they’ve been seeing 450%-500% growth year over year, season over season.

What has been behind their awesome growth? Sam says it's all about clear direction, vision and total consistency in all they do. For DEAD Studios, it’s an instantly recognizable monochromatic theme that is constantly developing, but always returns to the true feel of the brand.

Multichannel operations

DEAD Studios uses a multichannel sales approach that includes three main sales channels, but branches out into many smaller ones. They sell online, have a retail storefront in Bondi, Australia and wholesale throughout Australia and New Zealand. As a wholesaler, they deal with about 70 retailers in Australia, 15 in New Zealand, and a couple in the United States and Japan each.

Sam feels this multichannel approach is a huge competitive advantage, not only allowing them to stay relevant as many fashion companies come and go, but bringing much more awareness and confidence in the brand to customers.

In the before

Before QuickBooks Commerce, they were using a very basic excel spreadsheet to manage inventory. Early on in their business (and in ours - they’re one of our earliest customers), DEAD Studios found QuickBooks Commerce and realized that while basic at the time, it did exactly what they needed in terms of inventory management and invoicing. In fact, Sam notes that the system has grown along with their business and gone from being basic to very advanced today.

Now with QuickBooks Commerce

They now use QuickBooks Commerce to track stock levels, track inventory in the online store and for invoicing. It’s especially helpful that QuickBooks Commerce sorts and organizes all their SKUs, making invoicing fast and easy. DEAD Studios uses Shopify to handle their online sales through multiple sales channels. QuickBooks Commerce integrates with Shopify, allowing for an easy exchange of information between the two systems. DEAD Studios cites Shopify as the most important QuickBooks Commerce integration they use.

Sam also sees a huge advantage in having inventory information stored on the cloud when it comes to customer support. He’s able to easily track orders and invoices, making it easy to find the relevant information as needed. When they’re moving over 3000 units per day to locations all around the world, having all that information at his fingertips is critical.

The future for the brand

What’s in the future for DEAD Studios? Spreading their streetwear even further through several new retail stores in Australia and New Zealand, and expanding wholesale into the Asian and American markets. And even more, continuing to have their brand photographed on various fabulous bodies around the world.

See more and grab a piece of this hot brand for yourself on their website. 

Festival Clothing: wholesaling and inventory management in their own niche

Porter Lyons halves inventory management time with TradeGecko

Wanderer Bracelets - managing inventory and promoting change from the jungles of Bali