As the referee raised the champion’s arm in May at UFC 315 in Montreal, Canada, Perth streetwear brand StreetX lit up followers’ screens with a clothing collection that had already called the win.
Perth UFC fighter Jack Della Maddalena had just defeated American Belal Muhammad to claim the welterweight title when the release dropped.
Separately, just hours after the seven-year-old son of retiring West Coast Eagles star Jeremy McGovern nonchalantly flipped the bird to a section of the crowd at Optus Stadium during his dad’s lap of honour in August, StreetX founder Daniel Bradshaw had locked in a charity clothing collaboration to mark the event.
And a couple of years earlier, amid ongoing public enthusiasm for the Matildas (and skipper Sam Kerr) post World Cup, StreetX launched a 72-hour collection to mark the captain’s homecoming for an Olympic qualifier in Perth.
StreetX has consistently demonstrated a disruptive and unconventional marketing strategy that breaks through the ceiling of the saturated e-commerce fashion market.
The Perth retailer, which boasts a range of streetwear apparel and accessories with a street-meets-sport edge, has stayed nimble since its inception in 2011.
Mr Bradshaw was still at university when he launched StreetX as a modest, multi-brand online retailer.
He then branched into pop-up stores before signing his first bricks-and-mortar lease; admittedly without reading the fine print.
About five years ago, he pivoted StreetX to focus solely on its homegrown brand and has pursued an aggressive expansion into overseas markets since.
They know
“We’ve always tried to be left of centre from a marketing perspective, and strategy as a whole,” Mr Bradshaw told Business News.
He said the business’s campaigns weren’t always the most polished or perfectly executed, but they gave customers a different way to buy into the brand.
“Run and gun” was one way Mr Bradshaw described the approach, which has at times raised eyebrows and made news headlines.
In one example of the strategy last year, the brand gave away hundreds of T-shirts after Mr Bradshaw invited followers to stage a mock robbery in a store created by StreetX for that very purpose.
Resulting images of a stampede of (mostly) young men became social media gold.
Mr Bradshaw said the use of DIY, iPhone and security camera footage in sales campaigns marked a point of difference from the traditionally high budgets of the industry majors.
“We’re still a small, fast-moving business, so we always try to do things cutting edge, new and different, and we like testing,” he said.
StreetX has a long-running partnership with the AFL. Photo: StreetX
StreetX uses the low-supply, high-demand model to foster exclusivity around its clothing drops, often opting for 72-hour releases to create traffic.
Driven by trends in pop culture, the fast-paced, evolving e-commerce fashion market has at times caught larger, backroom-heavy brands on the hop.
Mr Bradshaw capitalises on his brand’s flexibility, using its size and agility to respond to emerging cultural moments in parallel to its long-term plans and partnerships.
He said a much of StreetX’s capacity for rapid responses came from equity in pre-existing relationships, such as the quick turnaround for the McGovern collaboration.
“We’ve had campaigns that bombed and we’ve had campaigns that have exploded … that’s how fast social media is changing,” Mr Bradshaw said.
“You have to be on the forefront and trying different things and be ready for things to [go wrong].”
Mr Bradshaw said each of StreetX’s partnerships had different collaboration strategies aimed at regions or a type of consumer the business wanted to target.
“If we do a specific collaboration, we pick a couple of items that are going to be the real standout item that [attracts] eyeballs,” he said.
“Then we’ve also got more basic offerings that go within the collaboration, so we can still service the customer.
“We structure each collaboration differently.”
One of StreetX’s most notable collaborations has been with the AFL.
The brand has partnered with specific players from the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles, and curates a wide range of merchandise with other clubs.
Mr Bradshaw said StreetX had chosen players it felt embodied the brand’s culture, rather than those performing best on field at the time.
“It’s very much the same with the brand partners we work with,” he said.
“They all need to have a specific storyline that aligns with us.
“That’s first and foremost the thing when we’re picking partners: how does it align with sort of our vision and where we’re going?”
The business’s biggest collaboration to date has been with British sportswear and football equipment brand Umbro, while another with footwear brand Crocs had also gained traction.
For a brand that’s deeply rooted in Australian pop culture and sport, humour and relevance also play a part in the execution of the StreetX strategy.
The business has partnered with former AFL star Ben Cousins for its latest collaboration, titled ‘the prince of Perth’, 20 years after his 2005 Brownlow Medal win.
Mr Bradshaw said StreetX was leaning further into sports with the launch of its own athletic division, after supplying the uniforms and merchandise for the niche sporting code of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
According to the campaign, the collaboration merges the intensity of Brazilian jiu-jitsu with the grit of streetwear and was “built for those who like to fight hard and look going doing it”.
StreetXAD – the name of the new division – has a range of jerseys alongside everyday T-shirts, hoodies and hats.
World stage
StreetX booked less than $5,000 worth of sales in its first month in business. It’s a far cry from its best month, at $1.2 million, in August this year.
The label has grown beyond its local roots, swapping Australia for the US as its biggest customer base after a launch into that market.
StreetX now generates 49 per cent of its sales from the US, 42 per cent from Australia, and 9 per cent from the rest of the world.
Mr Bradshaw said the customer base, historically dominated by Australia at 90 per cent, had tilted toward overseas buyers in the past few years.
“Australia has always been our number one market, but that’s slowly starting to shift, which is great, because Australia is not decreasing; the other markets are really rapidly increasing,” he said.
In January, StreetX created an American entity and opened a thirdparty logistics warehouse to ship direct from the US.
The brand launched the official expansion into the US market with a pop-up store in Los Angeles and recently hosted another in Las Vegas as part of its staged rollout.
The big-ticket item will be a collaboration and activation at the UFC light heavyweight championship at Madison Square Garden in New York in November.
Perth’s Jack Della Maddalena is on the card for fight night.
Mr Bradshaw said the business had always sought alignment with the US market, where cities including LA had a strong streetwear culture.
“Especially on the sporting side of the brand, which is doing really well there, there’s a great holding in the US for that,” he said.
Rather than opening a retail outlet in the US, Mr Bradshaw said an online presence and activations were more suited to the current strategy.
“One day we’d love to have bricksand-mortar store, but in terms of the retail landscape in Los Angeles, especially, it’s very different,” he said.
“But that is definitely something down the track we would love to do.”
Mr Bradshaw said the business had always been self-funded and needed to take more strategic steps in terms of its expansion.
While establishing an east coast presence, particularly in Melbourne, had long been on the agenda, StreetX’s growth in the US market redirected the brand’s plans, he added.
Europe and the UK are the next markets Mr Bradshaw is planning to tackle, from late 2026 to 2027, with an ambition to open warehouses in those jurisdictions.
