Profitable growth, international expansion, expansion of categories: things could hardly be going better for the Swedish outdoor brand Revolution Race. What’s special about the brand: Revolution Race relies exclusively on direct sales and online trading.
Revolution Race (abbreviated RVRC) was founded in 2013 by the founding duo Pernilla and Niclas Nyrensten in Boras, Sweden. While the classic outdoor market was still rather skeptical about online trading at the time, the two started with the maxim that they wanted to use the possibilities of online trading as a D2C brand. RVRC offers classic outdoor clothing for men and women, but at significantly lower prices compared to traditional outdoor brands. How is this possible? “An important part of our business model is that we sell directly to consumers. By not sharing profit margins with middlemen and not having our own stores that incur additional costs, we can ensure that we can continue to offer high quality products at reasonable prices. It is important to have the same quality as other competitors, but at a better price level,” explains CEO Paul Fischbein, who has taken over operational management for around a year.
Sales have almost doubled in two years
The concept seems to be working. RVRC now sells in more than 40 countries and has a total of 18 local webshops with their own currency, language and customer service. The countries of Japan, South Korea and Canada were recently docked, but are not yet localized. The company also launched in the USA a year ago. “Still with very small volumes compared to other countries such as Germany, but with a promising start,” says Fischbein. In the 2020/21 financial year, net sales were around 900 million Swedish krona (78.8 million euros), a year later it was 1.3 billion Swedish krona (113.9 million euros). At the end of June 2023 it was 1.6 billion Swedish crowns (140.2 million euros). In just two years, sales have almost doubled. And the first quarter of the new year once again brought strong growth of 24 percent.
The DACH region is one of the most important markets
RVRC divides sales into three regions: the Nordic countries, the DACH region and the “rest of the world”. While brand awareness is now high in the home market of Sweden and the other Nordic countries and growth is slower, the other regions still offer a lot of potential. RVRC now generates 90 percent of its sales outside its home market of Sweden, with the DACH region, with Germany being the largest market, now accounting for 50 to 60 percent of its total sales. The third region, the “Rest of the World”, is currently growing the fastest. These primarily include the Netherlands and Great Britain. But Poland, the Czech Republic and France are also achieving high double-digit growth rates.
Multifunctional products and the boom among dog owners
With multifunctional products and affordable prices, RVRC wants to reach as wide a target group as possible, without limiting itself to mountain sports and hiking like many classic outdoor brands. Fischbein: “We see many of our products as multifunctional products that can be used at any time. Many of our customers wear our products when walking their dog or just being outside. We want to focus on all outdoor activities, not just hiking or something like that.” The multifunctionality and relative affordability of the products are also a way to make nature and outdoor activities accessible to everyone, the CEO continued. “I think we are very successful with this and our positioning is the main reason for our growth and the great interest of consumers.”
Dog owners in particular seem to have discovered RVRC for themselves, even if this was not explicitly intended at first. “Dog owners are definitely an important customer group, but to be honest, it’s something we only gradually discovered,” admits Fischbein. “We are happy about this and have even launched a small range of dog clothing to get even closer to this target group. “We have worked with animals in our marketing from the beginning and perhaps this has enabled us to appeal to many dog owners.”
Further expansion of the categories
The collection is growing in parallel with international expansion. Products for children, bags and shoes were only introduced in 2021. Shoes in particular grow very quickly. “I think it’s the fastest growing product category. We started with four shoe models. “Now we’re expanding to almost 30 products if you count the colors,” explains Fischbein. A new alpine collection for winter sports has also just been launched. In addition to clothing, it also includes ski goggles and gloves. New categories will also be tested and added in the coming months, but Fischbein is not yet revealing what they might be.
High satisfaction ratings
Technical outdoor products are generally considered to require explanation, which is why traditional outdoor brands initially had doubts as to whether their collections could even be sold online. After all, there are no salespeople in online retail who can explain the product. RVRC therefore secures the trust of customers through the product reviews submitted by the customers themselves. Achieving consistently good ratings here was crucial for the brand. To date, RVRC closely tracks customer satisfaction through reviews and boasts over 500,000 reviews with an average score of 4.6 out of five. “We want to be the most recommended outdoor brand in the world,” says Fischbein, explaining his long-term vision. This also includes showing all reviews, even if someone was dissatisfied.
Increase brand awareness, but no own stores
In order to become better known, RVRC relies primarily on online advertising and social media. “We want to concentrate on operating as a digital company and not doing too much offline,” explains Fischbein. He has also tried advertising on buses and outdoors, but “as a digital company, we are used to seeing immediate impact and monitoring all our activities and tracking them with KPIs. That’s much harder to achieve in the physical world.”
And what about your own businesses? He doesn’t see that at the moment either. If at all, he can only imagine stores from the perspective of brand building, but not as a source of revenue. Fischbein: “I have great respect for my colleagues in the industry who run physical stores. It’s very complex, very difficult, and I don’t think we are experts in this area. I think we’re very good at what we do and I don’t want to change that concept too much.”