Snag set to report £2m turnover in first year of trading

An Edinburgh-based online tights firm which launched earlier this year expects to exceed £2 million in revenues in its first year of trading.

Brie Read (second from left) is founder and chief executive of Edinburgh-based tights brand Snag. Picture: Contributed

Snag, an “every-size and every-shape” tights brand that began trading at the end of March, is forecasting a full-year turnover of £2.2m.

The start-up, which sells tights that vary in width as well as in length, has already turned a profit in its inaugural year and serves 50,000 customers in 25 countries.

Founder and chief executive Brie Read, who led meal delivery firm Diet Chef until its sale in 2015, attributed Snag’s growth to a genuine product need and positive marketing, which has led to a strong social media presence.

She said: “We only market in the UK, so international growth has been through word of mouth.

“I think it’s a combination of a few things. One, there’s a real need for the product and, secondly, we’ve been really size positive in the way that we’ve done all of the marketing.

“We think of it as a co-owned brand between the customers and ourselves. We’ve had a huge response to the way that we talk to people.

“We’ve had feedback from people saying they don’t see people like themselves in advertising and that its been really refreshing to see that. It’s amazing to see yourself represented. Rather than marketing being so aspirational, it’s now much more about being relatable to people.”

Read, who has founded a number of digital economy start-ups, came up with idea for Snag after speaking to friends who shared her problem of finding tights that fit.

She said: “Everybody was the same, it seemed that whatever size they were, tights didn’t fit. And then it was really working out why.

“That was the bit I found most curious, that actually tights weren’t different widths, they were just different lengths and expected to stretch to all sorts of different builds. So, in reality, an XXS pair of tights and an XXL pair were the same size, they were just different lengths.”

Snag has sold around £130,000 pairs of tights and experienced month-on-month revenue growth of 78 per cent in December, with a returning customer rate of 25 per cent.