Grindr and fashion: A new collaboration path
In a seemingly unlikely collaboration, gay hookup app Grindr will offer exclusive content from London’s biannual men’s Fashion Week.
For those who don’t know, Grindr is an extremely popular app that uses GPS and a photo-heavy user interface to help its primarily gay male customer base to find one another for dates or hookups. The app boasts one million active users per minute, but despite its popularity, the app wants to expand its offerings to bring in more users.
How Grinder will make this all work
Landis Smithers, head of marketing and collaboration for Grindr tells NYT, “There’s a generation out there that doesn’t seem to care if people know that Grindr is on their phone, and there’s a generation that does.” With new content that expands its scope beyond the realm of no-strings-attached hookups, Smithers hopes that new users may download the free app because they “don’t have to use it for what its prime function is.”
Grindr will offer its users a code to access a live stream of J.W. Anderson’s menswear runway show during London Fashion Week. In fact, Grindr will be the only place you can watch this exclusive content, which may encourage fashion fans to download the app.
This was a no-brainer for the famed designer
For award-winning designer J.W. Anderson, the decision to grant Grindr exclusive access to his runway show was “a no-brainer.” He sees an obvious overlap between men looking for a nice pair of pants and men looking to get into one another’s pants: “I think fashion is a sexy platform as well, ultimately. We’re all human, so we all have to be somewhat sexually attractive to someone. That’s the name of the game, with clothing.”
Smithers is optimistic about the collaboration as well, noting that fashion is “a very big topic of interest for a certain segment of our consumer.”
This is Grindr’s first attempt to incorporate different types of content. The app is looking to broaden its offerings, and may include music and night life content in the future.
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