Luxury sleepwear brand Petite Plume is expanding into home and hospitality with lifestyle collaborations
Luxury sleepwear brand Petite Plume is ramping up product partnerships outside of fashion in an effort to expand into a lifestyle brand. Now in its ninth year, Petite Plume is a profitable eight-figure business — and the company is betting on collaborations for incremental growth.
The idea is to create a “World of Petite Plume” by designing products in a wide range of lifestyle categories to reach new audiences. Over the past few months, Petite Plume has partnered with bedding brand Parachute on a line of pajamas inspired by Parachute’s prints, as well as holiday cards and stationary sets in partnership with Minted. It also teamed up with French bakery and cafe Maman on a line that included placemats, napkins, table runners and mommy-and-me aprons,
For Petite Plume, collaborations have been a way to help the brand expand into new areas like home and hospitality. These partnerships kicked off in January 2023, starting with a collection exclusive to the Colony Hotel. This was Petite Plume’s first foray into the hospitality space. Its latest foray into the hospitality space includes a capsule collection with luxury hotel Eden Rock St. Barths, which was released this week.
Since launching as a children’s pajamas brand in 2015, Petite Plume has expanded into sleepwear for the whole family. It’s currently sold in over 500 stores, including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. The majority of the brand’s revenue still comes from its direct-to-consumer channel, which the company wants to grow further.
Fanny Quehe, chief marketing officer at Petite Plume, told Modern Retail that the main driver behind many of these collaborations is the pursuit to evolve into a lifestyle brand that’s steeped in European-inspired nostalgia. “It’s also to build credibility across categories that we’re looking to build, and home is a big one of those,” Quehe said.
So far, the collections are contributing to the DTC growth. “We’re likely to close the year at an increase of 80% [revenue] over last year,” Quehe said.
The company’s marketing playbook now consists of a combination of social ads, affiliate marketing, email and SMS. “We’ve also diversified our spending and doubled down on what we know works for us,” Quehe said. The fourth quarter has historically been Petite Plume’s most profitable of the year, and the addition of brand collaborations has helped bring more visitors to Petite Plume’s website during a busy time.
The strategy started out organically, but Quehe said the success of the early partnerships led the brand to pursue more. The company is now seeking out specific companies that reflect Petite Plume’s aesthetic.
“They need to serve as an opportunity to build the Petite Plume narrative, whether that’s through heritage travel or this idea of a legacy or home,” Quehe said. She added that, first and foremost, the goal is to create a brand building initiative that is going to also help reach new audiences.
For example, partnering with hotel brands seemed like a good fit since Petite Plume started as a luxury sleep brand.
The sleepwear style that launched at the Colony Hotel in 2023 is still performing well today. Other hospitality collaborations include one with the Hotel Del Coronado, which sold out in its first month. There, Quehe said, “We created 100% mulberry silk in a beautiful watercolor print, which was representative of the property.”
“They’re all legacy hotels with a very rich history,” Quehe said. “What we learned is that a really compelling product pays homage to the properties.” These collections are typically sold on both companies’ websites and at the hotels and their respective websites if the hotels have them.
With Maman, the idea was to expand in the home section through new types of products. Petite Plume entered the home and pet categories in 2023. It added products like flannel bedding, table linens and pet accessories made from the brand’s popular fabric prints. “It’s been slowly becoming a meaningful part of our portfolio,” Quehe said.
These types of cross-brand partnerships have become a go-to strategy among startup brands trying to expand their reach. Hospitality and health clubs, in particular, are working with emerging brands to carry their products.
Philip Atkins, founder of the marketing agency Phidel Digital, said one of the reasons these lifestyle partnerships among brands have taken off is because they are a relatively low-cost customer acquisition play. That’s especially enticing during a time when digital advertising costs are increasing.
“There is also so much content pollution out there; brands can leverage these partnerships both for social media enrichment and to drive commerce,” said Atkins, whose agency has helped create collaborations like Boy Smells’ Magnolia Bakery-inspired banana pudding candle.
For Petite Plume, more lifestyle collaborations with other brands are set to roll out next year. “Collaborations are a really powerful tool when it comes to extending brand reach, developing brand perception, creating unique experiences,” Quehe said. “But in today’s ecosystem among DTC brands, a lot of them can very quickly start to feel gimmicky or forced.”