How Snag Built a Brand on Who Others Ignored
TL;DR: Snag turned one woman's frustration that tights never fit into a fast-growing DTC brand — by 2021 turnover had reached around £45m, up from £3.5m in its first year — built entirely on serving the customers the hosiery industry had ignored.
A brand born from a bad day in tights
Snag — founded in 2017 by Brie Read — started with a universally relatable problem: tights that never quite fit, and a frustrating moment on an Edinburgh street. Rather than treat that as a one-off annoyance, Read treated it as a market the incumbents had simply failed to serve, and built a brand around fit for every body.
The growth was fast. Turnover rose from £3.5m in its first year of trading to around £45m by 2021, with customers in some 90 countries — fuelled by social-first marketing and a loyal community rather than big traditional ad spend. Those figures come from the company's documented growth; it has continued to expand since.
The strategy: serve the ignored
Snag's real insight is a strategic one any small business can borrow. The biggest opportunities are often not in out-competing everyone for the mainstream customer, but in properly serving a group the market treats as an afterthought. Inclusive sizing was not a bolt-on for Snag — it was the entire proposition, the product and the marketing all at once.
Because the mission was authentic, the marketing largely wrote itself. Customers who had never found tights that fit became vocal advocates; the brand's social content reflected real bodies rather than idealised ones; and that authenticity did the work a glossy campaign would have struggled to buy.
Community as a moat
Snag built a community, not just a customer list. That community is a genuine competitive advantage: it lowers acquisition costs, generates word of mouth and user content, and makes the brand hard to copy — because a rival can imitate a product far more easily than it can imitate belonging.
What small businesses can take from this
Look for the customer your industry quietly ignores. If you can serve them better than anyone — and mean it — you get three things at once: a product with a reason to exist, marketing that spreads itself, and a community that defends you. Underserved is often just another word for underexploited.
Snag's lesson is one I give small-business owners constantly: you don't have to beat everyone for the mainstream customer. Find the group your industry treats as an afterthought and serve them properly. Do that authentically and your marketing starts doing itself, because people who have finally been seen tell everyone. Underserved is underexploited. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
The biggest small-business opportunities are often the customers an industry ignores — serve them authentically and your product, marketing and community all flow from one idea.
Which customer does your industry quietly overlook — and could serving them better become your whole proposition?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Based on reporting from TheIndustry.fashion, FashionNetwork and The Scotsman.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
