The LTK Connect Visionaries series spotlights and celebrates visionary DTC businesses that are successfully changing industries on their own terms and have leveraged LTK Connect and LTK Creators to drive sales, traffic, and brand recognition in inspiring ways. First up, let’s look at shortyLOVE.
shortyLOVE founder and designer Sloane Gibney Grossberg left a lucrative career at Marc Jacobs to spend more time doing what she loves: translating her design knowledge into creating smarter, sophisticated bags. shortyLOVE started with one bag that Sloane designed to fit her lifestyle at a time when she no longer needed a big, heavy bag for commuting to the city—and grew when she learned that other people wanted and needed the same thing. As Sloane says, “Life is shorty. Love your bag.”
One of the biggest challenges facing shortyLOVE at the beginning was how to create awareness. Sloane promoted the budding brand on TikTok, but wanted to show how real people styled her bags—and knowing where to start and who to connect with felt overwhelming.
shortyLOVE joined LTK Connect in Beta in 2021 and full release in 2022 with the goals of connecting with influencers across the country who were compatible with the brand and streamlining communication with these influencers. The team wanted to move away from disparately reaching out to potential partners through Instagram DMs and emails and take advantage of connecting with relevant Creators in one centralized place.
Sloane was thrilled with not only the seamless management of casting, contracts, and end-to-end communication, but the opportunity to see Creators showing off the details of her designs and attracting more brand enthusiasts—playfully dubbed shortyLOVERS. “My advice to you is not to spend a lot of money on big marketing,” says Sloane. “You can do it yourself with LTK Connect.”
Watch the video above for an inside look at shortyLOVE and how they leveraged LTK Connect to grow their business.
“Running a successful influencer campaign is surprisingly easy on the LTK platform,” says Sloane. “No agencies. No consultants. We do it all in-house with LTK Creators who not only know what they’re doing, they care about doing great work. Now we have a real brand presence across Instagram and on the LTK app. I never dreamed it would be this simple!”
Ready to learn more? Check out How Shopify and DTC brands are utilizing Influencer Marketing.
To find top-performing Creators, manage end-to-end campaigns, boost reach, and track the success of your influencer marketing campaigns, you’ll need a platform that enables brands to manage all of this in a single space. LTK’s full-service to self-service influencer marketing platform and five-star shopping app with millions of shoppers grow influence and sales for 5k+ brands of all sizes.
About LTK Connect
For more than a decade, thousands of brands have worked with LTK to help drive billions of sales through its platform. LTK Connect, the new self-serve platform, opens the door for many more brands—especially direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies—to tap into the power of Creator Commerce™, many for the first time.
With a Beta launch in 2021, and now released globally, LTK Connect enables brands of all sizes to directly build, manage, and scale influencer marketing campaigns by providing tools for contract negotiation, Creator communication, reporting, and more. There are risks and challenges inherent to running DTC businesses. We launched LTK Connect to provide the content, technology, and resources DTC businesses will find most helpful to execute influencer marketing strategies and start seeing results, right away.