Kiwi social media heavyweight Shaaanxo endorses the bands. Photo / Instagram
Kiwi social media heavyweight Shaaanxo endorses the bands. Photo / Instagram
The internet saw it with Iyia Liu's waist trainer and it is happening again with another trendy product plastered over social media: the resistance band.
A Palmerston North couple who sell the training bands designed to enhance the derrière spent $16,000 to get their e-commerce business started and have since turned over $280,000.
Micah Hatch, 29, and Jessica Wong, 26, started The Peach Builder Co in February and have used Instagram, social media influencers including Shaaanxo and Lauren Curtis, and online giveaways to drive sales and brand awareness.
On average the pair send out around 300 orders per week and expect their sales to exceed $1 million by April next year.
"I work out at the gym and used to get quite a sore lower back. I would squat quite heavy and often found I was injuring my lower back so I did a quick Google search on things that could help, came across resistance bands, started using them ... and realised there was a gap in the market for them," Wong says.
Wong says she could not find resistance bands locally so decided to import around 500 from China - which sold out within the first month.
"We ran out of stock a couple of times but the demand was there so we kept on ordering."
Fast-forward almost nine months, the couple has sold thousands of resistance bands, placed eight shipping orders and trademarked the name The Peach Builder Co.
Most sales of the bands are going to Australia, its main market, and the brand has 45,000 followers on Instagram and just over 10,000 on Facebook.
The Peach Builder Co relies on Instagram and influencers to post about its product, using on average two influencers per month. It also uses Facebook marketing.
"Social media marketing and influencer marketing is still not taken as seriously as it should be. We've seen the power of it and we've seen other companies see the power of it," Hatch says.
"Everyone is on their phones and traffic is online these days."
Wong, who has a bachelor's degree in health science, quit her administration job at Massey University earlier this month to work on the business full time.
She looks to what Iyia Liu, founder of Waist Trainer, Luxe Fitness, Bambi Boutique and most recently Celebration Box, has done in leveraging social media to mark the business and increase sales.
Micah Hatch (left) and Jessica Wong, founders of Peach Builder. Photo / Supplied
Liu famously paid Kylie Jenner $300,000 to post a photo of her wearing a waist trainer on her Instagram account and later went on turnover $3.5m within a year of running the online business.
Wong says she is open to the idea of paying a celebrity to endorse her product.
So far, her business has sold around 7000 sets of the bands and is gearing up to launch new products ahead of Christmas, though she is tight-lipped on what these will be.
"We haven't planned to have a warehouse but if things carry on the way they are going I can seeing it happening in the next six months."
The pair say they aren't worried about resistance bands being a current fad and had named the business accordingly to be able to introduce new products.
"The market is becoming saturated with resistance bands ... we're not worried because we have goals to expand and that's we have called ourselves Peach Builder because we don't want to just be selling bands."
