Well, you might wonder where this blog post is going, and frankly, I wouldn’t blame you. Trust me it’s all good. I recently found myself in NYC one weekend when a well known “influencer” was introducing new products for her brand Dairy Boy. The person behind the brand is Paige Lorenze, who has become very popular with certain demographics. The brand itself has 52,000 followers on Instagram and her personal site has over 500,000 followers - which likely has made her quite successful and probably very wealthy. She also is currently involved with an American tennis player - Tommy Paul.

My interest began a few months ago when I came across some YOUTUBE videos she had created about life on the tennis tour. They usually are quite interesting excluding the makeup tips she would provide (Sorry). My daughter of course is very acquainted with her and owns a few items from the Dairy Boy Brand. Since we were going to be in NYC the weekend of the launch of the pop-up store, I was given instructions to please…please…please get my butt down there and check it out. We made it to our hotel early Saturday morning and I knew that the store was going to open at 10 am and I hoped that that if I arrived around that time, I could easily walk in. We grabbed a cab and made our way downtown to Soho and specifically - Spring Street.

We arrived around 10:15 and I saw a few girls waiting out front and I asked them “is the lineup?” They told me to go around the corner and when I did, I almost fell over. By my count there had to be over 1,000, mostly blond, young girls waiting to get in. The boss and I started to walk up the street and as we made our way we could see a camera crew following Paige Lorenze and Tommy Paul.

My daughter did a screen grab off social media and low and behold - Sheila is in the photo and according to Miss Sarah - Sheila is now famous. We continued walking up the street and joined the line. I had no idea how big the store was so the question in front of us - how long was this going to take. We spoke to a few girls in the line and were told that many of them had been waiting for hours prior to the store opening. What to do…what to do? We looked at each other and after about 40 minutes we decided that this simply wasn’t going to work. At the rate the way the line was moving we could be here all day.

I guess you might be wondering what is Dairy Boy? Below is from her website…..

Paige Lorenze is a young and dynamic creator, is the Founder of lifestyle brand, Dairy Boy.

After graduating from ski school, Paige moved to New York City to attend The New School and earned a degree in design.

While living in New York, Paige naturally merged with the fast-paced lifestyle of New York City and all that it has to offer. As she grew and evolved in the city, Paige began to gain a following of what is now a number of more than a million across her platforms as she shared her fashion, unique content and day-to-day life. As Paige continued sharing her personality and transparency of not always hopping on the bandwagon of certain trends, in this case, drinking anything other than dairy milk, a strong community and her brand, Dairy Boy, was born. What started as a simple catchphrase, "Dairy Girl Summer," between Paige and her supporters, has evolved into a movement celebrating individuality and embracing what makes us happy, even if it goes against the grain of the trends. Dairy Boy is a brand with shoppable, tangible pieces that reflect Paige’s beloved lifestyle from her staple denim, to cottage core bedsheets, nostalgic candles and more.

Whether you relate to the above is irrelevant because there are thousands that do. The weekend pop up shop was there to launch some new items coinciding around the US Open Tennis Championships. Hats, tee-shirts and jeans were going to be available. Since we had decided to give up, it certainly looked like we would not be able to get anything for Miss Sarah. I don’t like to give up so easily, so I woke up early on Sunday and took the train downtown and figured I would try to get in line very early.

So how early? I arrived at 7:30 am, a full 2 1/2 hours before the store opened. The streets of Soho were very quiet (gee that’s a surprise) and when I got there I realized I was first inline. About 30 minutes later two 20 something NYC girls arrived and we had a fascinating conversation while waiting. The two girls has just moved to NYC from Florida to start new jobs and they were sharing an apartment together. They told me that I was clearly going to get “Dad of the Year” when I told them why I was there. It was a lot of fun talking to them and we easily bridged the age gap.

I texted Sheila and suggested she come down before the store opened. She ended up arriving around 9:30. It was lovely weather so the long wait wasn’t that difficult, although I would have liked a coffee of coffee to get me functioning. We later found out that the lineup for Saturday was long for almost the entire day BUT by the end of the day it was manageable and you could have walked in. It was clear that the line on Sunday was going to be less as there was maybe 50 people in line by 10 am vs. the thousand the day before. Anyways, at a few minutes after 10 am the store opened and in we went. It wasn’t a very big space maybe 500 sq feet at the most. The main feature was the introduction of the jeans and Sheila decided to try a pair on for Sarah. They had posted a sign in the store suggested that they didn’t want you to lolly about for hours, so figure out what you want and move on.

The star of the show came over to chat and I mentioned that we had seen her boyfriend play in Toronto and I was here for my daughter. Paige commented - say hi to Sarah and then she posed for a selfie with another influencer. I found out shortly that the jeans weren’t priced at $39.99 and after we made all of our selections we gathered our things and lets just say we did our part to help out Dairy Boy.

I must admit I’m curious on how these influencers are changing the way products are being marketed. I’m not a luddite to all this as I have completed Digital and Social Media certificates from the University of Toronto and George Brown College. I decided to do some research and I found some interesting statistics about influencer marketing -

Instagram Yields the Highest ROI for Influencer Marketing
31% of Social Media Users Discover New Products through Influencers
Gen Z is Most Likely to Be Influenced by Influencer Recommendations
61% of Consumers Find Relatable Influencers Most Appealing
Over 80% of consumers are more inclined to buy products that creators promote.
More than 40% of social media users say they prefer influencer reviews when considering whether to make a purchase

So, what does this mean? Clearly, the way products get sold has changed and we shouldn’t be so surprised. The emergence of reality tv stars over the last 10 years shows us that we have a large appetite for information from people we are interested in. If your an Amazon shopper I’m sure you peruse the user reviews before buying and when you want to try the latest restaurant - you going to go to google for reviews from patrons.

The evidence for influencer marketing as a leading digital marketing strategy is overwhelming. These influencer marketing statistics demonstrate that creator partnerships pave the way for better brand-consumer relationships.

Obviously it worked as we spent quite a bit of money and we both knew who this person was and were not their typical age demographic. It ended up to be a good experience and one we can add to the Dad of the Year. Hopefully I can cash in the chips at some point. That’s it for now and thanks for reading.