Upstream’s Fashion Remix

Subscribers start by ‘streaming’ the clothes at home before deciding whether to purchase or extend the rental period. Priced at £24.99 ($33.03, €29.61) per month, the system operates on a ‘coins’ basis, with each subscriber allotted 500 coins each month. With these coins, users can access products up to the retail value of £250 ($330.33, €296.23) from brands including Aries, Martine Rose and Pop Trading Company. A pay-as-you-go option costing £34.99 ($46.20, €41.60) per item, per month is also available.

The platform specialises in surplus stock from various seasons. Returns are easy, with reusable packaging and pre-paid shipping. Each returned item is sustainably cleaned and sent to the next buyer. Users can make purchases (known as streaming) within the app without any commitment to buy. The longer they stream the item and hold onto it, the lower its price drops, aligning with secondary market pricing.

Fashion powered by music

Upstream’s most distinctive feature is its intrinsic relationship with music and emerging artists. ‘Music and fashion have gone hand in hand for decades, but no one’s put them in the same place,’ consultant brand director Matthew Murphy tells LS:N Global. ‘We’re celebrating both in equal measure.’

When Upstream acquires new stock, it can promote it through music content, highlighting the artist and the fashion label or designer. ‘We can offer emerging artists, who may not have big teams or large resources, a white-glove styling service,’ Murphy elaborates.  

Upstream can style them, create content – it’s already partnered with festivals such as We Out Here – and upload it to the app. The platform will even provide a Linktree directing users to the artists’ Bandcamp or Spotify pages, ideally driving additional revenue streams for these musicians. 

Disrupting discovery

In the same way users discover new music and artists on streaming platforms, Upstream’s model means that new fashion brands are recommended to subscribers. ‘Discovery is really important to us,’ Murphy explains. He adds that thanks to the mix of established brands and up-and-coming designers, Upstream is ‘truly a platform where brands that aren’t necessarily seeing youth consume their products can see them interact and engage with the brand’. 

Interestingly, because the price of a product diminishes with every wear and stream, the same stock can become accessible to a different community cohort in the long run. ‘With a wardrobe on rotation, you inevitably get discovery; you might stream a brand you’ve never heard of or listen to some music you’ve never encountered, and you get access to all that.’ 

User-generated community

‘Every cultural business wants to chase community, but we really are built on it,’ Murphy tells LS:N Global. Community is such a significant currency for Upstream that it devised a reward system for user-generated content (UGC). In addition to the coins each subscriber receives, users are rewarded with additional coins if they create content, post it and tag Upstream. ‘Whether you are a subscriber, influencer or artist, anybody within our community who’s creating and making content gets coins,’ Murphy explains. 

Users are rewarded even if Upstream doesn’t repost the content. The company is still figuring out how to set standards and whether it will need to introduce a cap on how much users can earn. ‘We’re still learning and testing; at this stage, it can’t be gamified.’ 

However, this system of celebrating UGC is integral to Upstream’s core values. ‘In today’s industry, the only people who really get paid by brands to wear their clothes are influencers or celebrities,’ says Nick Stickland, co-founder and CEO. ‘We were keen to democratise fashion because, even if someone only has 1,000 followers, that’s meaningful – we figured brands could access those friendship groups.’ 

The streaming opportunity

As with any innovative start-up, there are challenges. ‘When a model doesn’t exist, there is an education process that you go through,’ Stickland explains. ‘In our case, it’s about cracking how to communicate that necessary change in behaviour to understand the product.’ 

Upstream challenges both B2C and B2B models by suggesting a new way for products to be accessed at a trade level. ‘We need to educate our partners, whether they’re a music label or a brand – and that’s about building trust,’ Murphy says. 

Ultimately, the Upstream team believes that one of the biggest advantages it can offer its partners is revenue diversification options. ‘A lot of revenue channels have disappeared, so proposing a new one is not just about optimising existing customers, but bringing them new ones altogether.’ 

Further reading