Case Study
How small business MorphCostumes grew their sales by 26% with a global Amazon Ads strategy
MorphCostumes, a small Scottish-based costume company, used Amazon Ads to build brand awareness, drive sales, and expand internationally into 12 countries. Watch our three-part video series to learn more about their challenges as a small business, and what three advertising solutions they used to grow the business on a global level.
85%
85% of sales on Amazon1
26%
26% higher sales than previous year on Amazon2
Episode 1
Discover how MorphCostumes grew their business by using Amazon Ads to help connect their brand with the right customers.
Products used:
Episode 2
Learn how MorphCostumes optimized their sponsored ads campaigns to prepare for their peak events.
Products used:
Episode 3
Find out how MorphCostumes became a successful global advertiser using Amazon Ads insights and multi-country features.
Developing the iconic “Morphsuit”
The idea for MorphCostumes originated in 2009, when one of the founders, Gregor Lawson, wore a head-to-toe spandex suit during a weekend trip with friends in Dublin. Onlookers were so excited by the costume, they stopped him every few minutes to take photos. Seeing the potential demand, Gregor and his two friends, Ali and Fraser Smeaton, realized that there could be an opportunity to sell this iconic “Morphsuit” costume. They later founded MorphCostumes and started the small business from a tiny apartment in Scotland.
Initially, the business grew rapidly, but by 2015, other brands were selling similar designs and demand started to decline. As sales decreased, they decided to make other costumes and use Amazon Ads to help connect their brand with new customers.
Reinvigorating growth with Amazon Ads
The company started using Sponsored Products to create automatic targeting campaigns. They then moved to manual keyword targeting using a mix of broad, phrase, and exact match keywords to target highly relevant searches. As they gained in confidence, they built their Brand Store while leveraging Sponsored Brands; including both image and video ads. These ad types enabled them to reach customers browsing the whole category of costumes, as well as convert customers who were ready to buy. They also used A+ content to showcase their brand and stand out in the competitive market; highlighting awards they had won and the number of costumes they had sold.
To prepare for their largest selling periods like Halloween and Christmas, they focused heavily on creating engaging content with high quality photos for their product detail pages, optimizing keywords, and using negative keyword targeting to grow impressions. “It made it much simpler for customers to get to our product detail pages or our Brand Store in just a few clicks. This was a key driver for increasing our sales,” Fraser explains.
Navigating global expansion and cultural nuances
Once MorphCostumes refined their advertising strategy in the UK, they began expanding into new countries to grow and diversify their business. As a global advertiser, they had to learn the different cultural nuances and economic trends in each of the countries they were advertising in. They relied heavily on insights from the search term report to understand which campaigns and keywords worked in each country. They also used the suggested keyword localization tool to help with translating keywords.
The multi-country sponsored ads campaign manager allowed them to easily view and manage their campaigns in all countries in one campaign view. “The great thing about Amazon is once you have translated product detail pages in each country, you can lift and drop your campaigns that works in one country to another country. That has made it really easy for us to scale our Amazon Ads on a global basis,” says Fraser.
Looking Ahead
“I really can't imagine where we would be without Amazon Ads,” says Fraser. “It’s enabled us to get our products in front of customers quickly and efficiently.” Over the last decade, MorphCostumes has grown significantly, expanding into 12 countries, with 85% of their sales coming from Amazon.1 In 2023, they achieved 26% higher sales on Amazon than in the previous year.2
Moving forward, MorphCostumes is focused on continuing to grow by creating more products, optimizing their Amazon Ads campaigns, and expanding into new countries. “We've always believed in taking small steps and testing. Once we find something that works, that's when we run with it,” says Fraser.
1Advertiser provided data, UK, 2024.
2Advertiser provided data, UK, Dec 2022- Dec 2023. Results are reflective of campaigns for one advertiser, MorphCostumes, and are not indicative of future outcomes.