Oodie's Marketing Strategy: Zero to $600M in 6 Years

Davie Fogarty

Founder, The Oodie

Follow on X

$30M+

Revenue/mo

Business Type

E-commerce

Monetization

One-time Purchase

Founded

2018

The Beginning

If you've been scrolling social media anytime in the last five years, you've probably seen The Oodie. That oversized, ridiculous-looking wearable blanket that somehow became a global phenomenon.

Here's a look: Oodie hoodies

The kind of product that makes you go: "Who buys that?" And then you see the sales numbers and realize... everyone does.

Here's the wild part: The Oodie went from an idea to a $600 million business in just six years. But this isn't a lucky accident story. It's a story about a founder who knew the game, played it brilliantly, and did something founders rarely do: execute flawlessly on the basics.

How It Started

Let's rewind to Davie Fogarty's origin story. Because understanding where he came from explains why The Oodie worked so well.

Davie didn't grow up in Silicon Valley or study business at Harvard. He dropped out of university and tried to launch a Vietnamese roll shop in Adelaide, Australia. It flopped. Like most first-time entrepreneurs, he failed. But instead of giving up, he kept building. He started testing other business models. One that worked was growing Instagram pages and selling them. He grew one to 600,000 followers and sold it off. Then he realized something: he was good at marketing. So instead of starting a marketing agency (the boring play), he decided to go all-in on e-commerce. In 2018, Davie launched his first real e-commerce brand: weighted blankets. You know, those things designed to help with anxiety and sleep. The product was already saturated, and there were established competitors. But Davie had a theory. His theory was simple: Find products where people are already searching for solutions, but no strong brand exists yet. That's where you can move fast, invest in marketing, and own the space.

The weighted blanket brand made $10 million in its first year. Not bad. But then Davie had an idea that would change everything.

Right Product, Right Time

During a Europe trip with friends, Davie was thinking about the weighted blanket business. He wasn't satisfied. The market was getting crowded. Competitors were copying him. He needed something more defensible.

He asked himself: What's a better product to stack onto the "cozy, anxiety-calming" thing we're already selling? The answer came to him: wearable blankets. He didn't overthink it. He designed The Oodie™ Original during that trip—a oversized hoodie made from flannel and sherpa fleece, with a giant pocket big enough to hold... well, a year's worth of snacks. He got family and friends to model it in basic photos, wrote the copy himself based on direct response marketing principles he'd learned from books, and launched Facebook ads. Sales came on day one.

The first year? Over $1 million in revenue. Not millions plural. But solid. Enough to know he had something. Then 2020 happened. COVID-19 lockdowns started in March. People were stuck at home. Comfort wear wasn't just nice, it was essential. Search interest for The Oodie jumped over 200% in the UK and globally. People were searching for "wearable blankets" and The Oodie was there, ready, with capital behind it. By 2021, The Oodie was selling 205,000 units per month. Some individual days hit over $1 million in revenue. That's not going viral by accident. That's execution meeting opportunity.

How 15 Real Startups Hit $10K/Month (And Exactly What They Did)

15 real breakdowns of how early-stage startups found their first paying customers and scaled to $10K/month

Visit

MarketingCrafted Ads ↗

Never want to see ads? Become a member ↗

Please sign in to continue reading

We do this to make sure real humans read our stuff, not bots.

The Marketing Strategy That Scaled It

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.