Hey everyone!
I recently had the pleasure of speaking to Jordan Rich, a coordinator at Fabletics who also runs their influencer content program! It was really inspiring to hear the answers she had to my questions and also to get insight on the world of fashion marketing and content creation. As most of you know, I’m currently studying to become a part of the business side of the fashion industry, so hearing someone else’s experience was very cool for me. She shared a lot of great tips and insight; I learned a lot, and I hope you do too! Thank you Jordan for allowing me to interview you and
Emily: Can you please introduce yourself to the readers of Emily’s Edge? We’re so excited to have you on the blog today.
Jordan: Hi Everyone! My name is Jordan Rich. I am 26 years old, and I live in Los Angeles. I was born and raised in Manhattan Beach, CA and went to college at University of Arizona where I majored in Arts, Media, and Entertainment.
E: What’s your main role at Fabletics, and how did you get started working there?
J: I was referred to Techstyle (Fabletics parent company) by a family friend. She was close friends with one of the senior associates at Techstyle who was able to help push my resume along. I have been with Fabletics for a little over two and a half years now.
When I was first brought on, our team was fairly small. There were a total of 7 of us, who at that time made up the PR, Social Media, Brand Partnership, and Influencer team. My role was an assistant level position, and I was brought on to help build out the micro influencer program. Over the past two and a half years I was promoted to a coordinator position, and we have expanded our teams. There are now 4 women who sit on the Social Media team and there are now 11 of us on the PR/Brand Partnership team. I currently I run our IGC (Influencer Generated Content) program. This program works with strictly content creators in the micro space. For those of you who are not as familiar with this realm, there are two different types of influencers. Macro influencers are girls with the hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Most of these collaborations are paid partnerships with binding contracts.
Micro influencers are girls who have under around 50k followers, which is where I specialize. My program is a product for post partnership, meaning no payment of any kind outside of the products gifted by Fabletics. I go on Instagram and find content creators with anywhere from 100 followers to 50k followers who simply take amazing content. I try and find profiles that feel very organic and effortless, girls who I think would be a great fit for the brand. From there I send them two outfits per month in exchange for content and two posts on their personal Instagram page. Once I receive the images back from the influencers, I am able to share it with the wider Fabletics team to feature on our website, emails, social posts, ads, etc. When I first started building out this program in 2018, we were working with 15-25 influencers; now, we are partnering with over 200 influencers for just the IGC program alone.
E: Did you always know that you wanted to work in marketing?
J: To be honest, I had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. I knew I wanted to do something creative but I didn’t know exactly what that looked like. I didn’t have an interest in becoming a graphic designer and I had had a few social media internships but I didn’t have much direction. Right after graduation I did a few random jobs here and there before landing a corporate job at iHeart Media. I realized I wasn’t as familiar with the business world as my friends were, and I felt like I needed to go get a sales job just to have the experience. I figured if I could learn a little bit about the business side I could potentially land a position the bridged art and business. At the time, a friend I went to high school and college with was working at iHeart as an assistant; she mentioned that they were looking for an assistant in their commercial sales department. I figured if I was going to take a sales job it might as well be for a company I could relate to. My role at iHeart was to place commercial ads on radio stations. Although iHeart wasn’t the best fit for me, I learned a lot about the corporate world. Coming from a studio art/pop culture background, I wasn’t taught how to use Excel in school. I was immediately forced to learn the basic professional tools my friends had learned as marketing/business majors. From there I learned what I didn’t want to do, which was anything with numbers.
When I learned about the position at Fabletics I didn’t really know what to make of it. I knew nothing about influencers (on the way to my interview I actually googled the term “Influencer”) and the only social media experience I had was from summer internships a few years prior or my lack of interest on my personal Instagram page. Luckily, the two women interviewing me saw my work ethic and knew that the rest could be taught. When I got the job offer I thought they had made a mistake, I knew they knew I had no idea what an influencer was or how to even find one on Instagram. The only thing I knew was that it wasn’t sales, which at the time was the only thing I cared about. Now that I think back, it was a pretty bold move for both myself and Fabletics.
E: What has been the most rewarding part of your job? What has been the most challenging?
J: The most rewarding part of my job is definitely the relationships I am creating with these content creators. For many of them this is the first time a company noticed them and their work. For the most part the girls in the program do not consider themselves influencers. They truly are real people, they have everyday jobs, families, and purely create content on the side because they love it. Fabletics allows me to encourage these women to live out their passion on a more impactful level. They go from seeing their work on their personal page to being featured on Fabletics.com and on our Fabletics social page. This also gives our brand a more organic feeling; we are activewear for everyday people.
I would say the most challenging part of this job is maintaining every relationship. Currently, I run this program alone and it’s up to me to get everything done. Each month I have to send all 200 girls tow outfits per month and communicate due dates and deadlines, provide tracking, and answer any questions they might have. That’s in addition to the inner workings of actually sharing the content with the wider Fabletics team. Some mornings I wake up to 5 emails or I can wake up to 100.
E: Do you have any advice that you’d give to those who are aspiring to work in fashion marketing?
J: My only advice would be to say “Yes” to everything. Even if you don’t think it will be the right fit for you, I say try it out. I could not do my job at Fabletics if I hadn’t spent that year and a half learning about sales at iHeart. You never know what tools you may learn or people you might meet along the way.
E: Last but not least, what’s your favorite product from Fabletics?
J: Ugh this is such a tough question! I really love our Pureluxe leggings. They are so soft and perfect for all day wear of any kind and great for any kind of low intensity workouts.
Big thank you to Jordan for agreeing to be interviewed for Emily’s Edge! I hope you all were as inspired as I was.
Talk to you soon!
-Emily Berrol
Emily's Edge 
This is very cool and interesting!
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