How Sanne Vander built a successful merch brand on YouTube from her bedroom

Lifestyle YouTuber Sanne Vander is passionate about creating health and fitness content for her community. Sanne’s wellness–focused channel educates and inspires viewers with beauty tips, healthy living and fitness plans.

Continue reading to discover how Sanne built her brand (VNDR), created a dedicated community of fans (a.k.a. her “Vander family”), finds design inspiration, promotes her products, and more.

Building a relatable brand

“I fell in love with the concept of being able to create video content, upload it from your bedroom and share it with the world. Whether you are making videos or merch, all creative processes start with a story. What message do you want to get out to the world? Don’t be afraid to change your direction along the way.“

Sanne’s brand VNDR official has rocketed since growing her following across YouTube and Instagram. The secret behind her success is being able to engage with fans on a personal level. On Sanne’s YouTube channel you’ll find the “girl chat” playlist, discussing her personal struggles—covering everything from mental health to periods and shaving. Opening up in such a genuine way helps her connect with viewers, building trust around her brand. Fans are able to join Sanne on her fitness journey too, following her work–out experiments and transformation challenges. Her engaging, relatable video content has enabled Sanne to establish a large, loyal following of people who are proud to wear the products she creates.  

Designing products fit for ‘Vanders’

“Creating merch with Spring is super easy and efficient. I use the launcher to create designs directly without using other software like Photoshop or Illustrator.”

By creating her own sleek storefront, VNDR official merch, Sanne joined a network of thousands of influential, young entrepreneurial women using Spring to grow their personal brand.

As well as making design concepts personal to her story and identity, a lot of Sanne’s merch inspiration comes from her fans directly. Sanne’s products include not only variations of her branding, but uplifting messages on her clothing and accessories. For example, her Let’s Glow hoodie features two dragons on the back, encouraging Vanders to “become the strongest, most powerful” versions of themselves. 

Selling a range of products from athletic wear to hoodies, Sanne motivates followers to get #vanderfit and wear them while following her workouts. Take note–she’s successfully integrated top trending loungewear and is seeing promising sales from new products like fanny packs, sports bras, socks, and beanies. 

‘Glowing up’ social media to promote merch

Sanne excels at promoting on social media. She’s got Instagram totally figured out, taking full advantage of the platform’s full range of useful tools and features. Sanne follows promotional techniques on Instagram like highlighting her store link within her account bio, using Instagram stories to feature fans wearing VNDR products, as well as posting photos and videos wearing her own products too.

“My Vanders share a lot of photos of themselves wearing VNDR official merch on social media. It makes me happy seeing how amazing the designs look on them.”

Sanne also effectively promotes her products on YouTube. She’s set up the Teespring x YouTube merch shelf integration to showcase products and increase sales. She’s also optimized her channel banner to feature merch images and most importantly, wears her products in her video content too. As viewers watch her content they’re able to preview and purchase the same product from her merch shelf below the video.    

Thank you to Sanne for sharing her story! You can check out Sanne’s merch on her VNDR storefront, join the #Vanderfit club by subscribing Sanne’s Youtube Channel or check out her VNDR official instagram.

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