Thisismoney.co.uk: Exposed: I am not an Ethical Bag and Susie Bubble: I am not a Smug Twat
The Anya Hindmarch "I am not a Plastic Bag" PR catastrophe got worse when it was revealed that the bags were made in China and probably cost a carbon fooprint fortune to get them over to the UK. Now, in an even funnier twist, Susie Bubble has photos of ripoff bags m0cking the buyers of those bags, saying "I am not a smug twat" on sale for £19, but currently sold out. Certainly not the expected turn of events for Sainsbury’s, or Anya Hindmarch, or most upsettingly, for the genuine campaigners for ethical and socially responsible consumption. BoF first discussed this issue back when a horde of desparate shoppers queued up my street, clamouring for the bags on weekday morning.

New York Magazine: Tom Ford After Sex
Another article on Tom Ford (he’s clearly got PR under control) this time from New York Magazine. If you want to get into the psyche of the man himself, this article will help you get there.

Financial Times, Style: Models of a Financial Kind
You’ve heard of Roland Mouret for Gap and Giles Deacon for New Look, but now its Rodnik for HBS. Back in the Autumn, I talked to Rich and Phil of Rodnik about designing a t-shirt for the 5th year reunion of my business school class. They have woven this into their latest Financial Times column on the Adventures of Fashion.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion.

On my last trip to New York, I finally managed to see the new Tom Ford flagship store in person. After all of the hubbub about its "Hermes and Oprah" similarities, I wanted to judge for myself. Was Cathy Horyn right in criticising the high price-points as being out of reach even for the most discerning male customers? Was Horacio Silva on the mark for panning the store for its overly-exclusive environment?

I’m afraid the answer is yes. In spades.

For all of the talk about the luxurious feel of the store, I have to say it all felt quite ordinary to me. That is to say, it didn’t feel different from most of the other masses of luxury stores that are out there. The grey colour palette and silver store fittings reminded me a bit of the old Gucci store formats (that are now being phased out). Sure, the furniture and materials, based on Ford’s London home, were sumptuous and very tasteful. However, the store lacked that special something that makes truly unique retail formats stand out. When you walk into a Chanel store – any Chanel store -  you feel like you have truly entered the world of Chanel and all that it stands for. When you walk into Abercrombie & Fitch, there is a certain electricity in how the product and store environment go hand-in-hand to speak about the brand. 

This, the Tom Ford store did not have. Not yet, at least. For now, customers need to get through glass cabinets that hold many of the clothes more like museum pieces, than sumptuous articles of clothing. How is a customer going to feel the need to buy a beautiful cashmere sweater if he can’t even touch it before asking someone’s permission? This is akin to taking a child to a petting zoo and saying, "no petting allowed, unless you ask me first. "

The most disappointing thing for me is that Mr. Ford has completely misjudged the consumer he is going after. After having nailed it at Gucci, he has completely missed the mark here. Ford has insulted the intelligence of the customer by assuming he will pay the steep prices just because of all the frills. Frills or no frills, most luxury customers are very discerning about the product, and by making it so hard to form a judgment, the customer is forced to judge based on the store itself, not the product. The Gucci formula of glamour and sex won’t work when you are asking a man to spend $5000+ on a suit. It’s no wonder the store was completely empty.

My expections for this store were very high, even with the unfavourable media coverage that I had seen in advance. Mostly, this is because Tom Ford has been selling the idea of his eponymous brand to us for the past year and half.  It is also because I respect the man a great deal for his creativity, business acumen and personal style. So, you can say I felt rather disappointed than critical.

Many industry observers have been waiting with baited breath to see what he would come up with. Maybe this is another lesson learned for Mr. Ford, the erstwhile master of PR and spin. Be careful what you say (and how long you say it for, and how often you say it) about a big project in advance of its launch. You might just be setting yourself up for a different kind of high-profile PR than you had expected: the negative kind. Perhaps it would have been better for Mr. Ford to take a listen from the Internet world and go beta first, testing out the concept and honing it carefully before making the big splash.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion.

It was bound to happen.

Some of the most innovative (and forward-thinking) online fashion retailers are starting to use the Web 2.0 technologies that have been successfully used by other (non-fashion) online retailers like amazon.com.

WWD revealed today that stylehive.com will be launching web 2.0 collaborations with Gap, Shopbop, Lisa Kline, Ron Herman, Hayden-Harnett, GenArt and others in the coming days. Stylehive will be enabling online retailers to create branded hives, which can act as communities for online shoppers and which will drive traffic to the e-commerce sites. When compared to advertising rates, this is a potentially low-cost way of acquiring new customers, and then creating a relationship with them that will be facilitated by stylehive. The Business of Fashion has been eagerly anticipating moves like this, and the potential of Fashion 2.0 has been discussed in previous posts and links of the week.

It will also be interesting to see how entrenched players like Net-a-Porter, Yoox and eLuxury incorporate these kinds of features into their own sites. One could learn a lot from Macy’s experience, which has added comments to its site and discovered that:

Since Macy’s added reviews to its site in September, customers have been posting an average of 225 reviews a day. The comments are screened only for profanity and relevance. "We find a lot of value in customers being able to share information with each other. There is a lot of credibility in a customer to customer exchange," said a Federated spokesman
                                                                                                                                        WWD, 16 May 2006

While the stylehive and Macy’s option might not be the best route for exclusive luxury and fashion brands to take, it will help to demonstrate how interactive engagement with shoppers can drive sales and increase loyalty. As Brendan Hoffman, CEO of Neiman Marcus direct told WWD, "Potentially, there’s a lot of value with that, it just has to be done within the Neiman Marcus experience."

We’ll be watching to see how things go and looking for the key lessons for those brands and e-tailers in the higher-end space, with more to lose in terms  of reputation and more to protect in terms of brand value.You can learn more about stylehive from their blog.

CIT: Behind the Business – Mark Ecko
I enjoyed this series of video interviews with Mark Ecko, the graffiti artist-turned fashion entrepreneur,  who  founded  *ecko unltd which is now a multi-brand fashion and apparel company with combined annual revenues of $1.2b. Mark also shares nuggets of  insight at eckolog, a blog on running a creative business.

New York Times: Coloured undies
This is an article which shows how finding and developing an underserved, ignored or altogether empty market niche can be one of the best ways to build fashion and apparel brands. Novelty underwear, in bright patterns and colours, from the likes of Ginch Gonch, Aussie Bum and American Apparel, is a rapidly growing market segment, says the article by David Colman. These zany briefs are capturing share in the $1.1b mens knit underwear market, possibly as high as 50%, in a market, that up until now, has always been reserved for tighty-whiteys.

International Herald Tribune: Isabella Blow, Fashion Loses an Inventive Icon
The accolades have been pouring in (and the rumour mill has been working overtime) since the death of Isabella Blow, one of the fashion world’s true eccentrics, earlier this week. While there were many obituaries written, I found Suzy Menkes’ tribute the most honest and accurate. That Isabella Blow was, in and of herself,  a "work of art", was the highest of compliments from fashion’s reigning Queen of the critics.

Portfolio: Fashion Inc.
There’s some interesting fashion and business commentary, with the occasional gossipy diversion, at Fashion Inc, one of the new blogs that has emerged with the launch of Portfolio magazine, which is focused on various parts of the business world. Lauren Crowe, a former writer for DNR and one of my favourites, Time Style and Design, is the blogger behind Fashion Inc.  The latest news from Lauren is that Jil Sander may be on the block again, following Change Capital Partners’ investment only 2 years ago.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

Narciso Rogriguez, designer of Caroline Bessette Kennedy’s wedding dress, and Liz Claiborne, the purveyor of everything from Juicy Couture tracksuits to Lucky jeans, announced today that Liz Claiborne Inc has taken a 50% stake in Mr Rodriguez’s namesake label.

Of late, we haven’t seen that many large fashion conglomerates take an interest in growing small high-end businesses. This particular partnership is also of interest because on the surface, there does not seem to be a natural match between Narcisco’s target market of luxury customers (who buy his collection at Neiman Marcus, Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Barney’s) and Liz’s connections and expertise with lower priced Contemporary and Bridge labels (which are distributed much more broadly in stores like Bloomingdales, Macy’s and JC Penney). However, with the funding power and clout of a large strategic partner behind him, Narcisco may finally realise his aims to build a global brand. According to an article in today’s WWD, Liz’s strategy for the brand does not  include repositioning Narciso’s label to a lower price point, but rather to stick to the current high-end positioning of his designer collection while leveraging the Narcisco Rodriguez brand in licensing and non-apparel categories, where Liz has a great deal of expertise.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion.

In Canada, many young aspiring fashionistas cut their teeth on Fashion Television (or FT), hosted by Jeanne Beker. I accidentally happened upon the site recently and came across a veritable treasure trove of video content that is relevant to some of the topics recently debated and discussed on The Business of Fashion:

Fashion blogging
Any regular readers of this blog know that I have been a big fan of the Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, since I first came across his site almost two years ago. His was the first blog of any sort to really catch my attention because there was something really powerful about seeing clothes that are styled by real people on the street. It brings the clothes to life in a way that high-fashion editorial sometimes cannot.  FT does a great video profile of Scott that allows you to see how The Sartorialist came to be, explains how Scott thinks about his work and reveals that The Sartorialist is now receiving over 1.3 million page views per month. [You can see my own Sartorialist moment here]

The Sartorialist blog also opened my eyes to the potential of what the democracy of blogging could do for a fashion business, particularly emerging businesses with limited profiles and advertising budgets.  What if, for example, you could mouse over a sweater you like in one of Scott’s photos and could discover who designed the sweater and where you could buy it online through phototagging (just like you can tag people in your photos on Facebook.com)? Its Fashion 2.0 folks and its only going to get more interesting.

There is a lot more discussion of the fashion blogosphere is in this video overview narrated by Jeanne Beker, highlighting the pros and cons of the fashion blogging phenomenon, which some say has resulted in a reported 2 million fashion blogs. Jeanne speaks to some of the world’s leading fashion critics  (Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, Kate Betts from Time magazine, and Colin McDowell from the Sunday Times) to get their views on what blogging has done for them. She also speakss to the (love-him-or-hate-him) blogstar Perez Hilton.

Tom Ford’s new store on Madison Avenue
FT also gives us a peek into the much-discussed Madison Avenue flagship recently opened by Tom Ford, and heavily criticised by some observers for being too exclusive and too expensive. Tom Ford gives Jeanne a personal tour of the store which provides some of Tom’s own thinking on what he was trying to accomplish with the store. Jeanne does go through the price points in the store, which are truly astronomical,  including personalised underwear for $75.

Mentoring emerging designers
When emerging designers talk to me about setting up their own businesses, I often encourage them to try to get some time working in the studio of an established design house first.  This video outlines the mentorship of young proteges including Yves Saint Laurent (mentored by Christian Dior) to Francisco Costa (mentored by Calvin Klein) to Narcisco Rodriguez (mentored by Donna Karan). You can see how some of the industry’s biggest names of today started their careers as apprentices to some of the biggest names from yesteryear.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion. 
Scott Shuman photo courtesy of FT.

Top fashion business links for the week of 30 April, 2007:

New York Times – No Store is a Hero to its Valet
Either the New York Times really has it in for Tom Ford (perhaps he spurned and interview request or declined an editors request for a discount?) or there is a real issue with Tom Ford’s new eponymous business. First, Cathy Horyn criticized Ford’s new business for being too niche and too grand (after Ford had provided her with a private tour – you can’t buy this woman’s vote) and today, in its Critical Shopper feature, Horacio Silva pans the store for confusing "exclusionary for exclusive."

Modabot.de – Brave New Internet World – How the Internet is changing the Fashion Universe
Fashion 2.0 is a hot topic. The Business of Fashion recently advocated that big fashion brands should consider the Internet an avenue that they should be cruising down, albeit with necessary caution. Over at Modabot.de, the Berlin-based fashion blog for avantgarde fashionistas, they delve into the topic with vigour, providing a 360 degree view of the fashion blogosphere and some of the new social shopping sites that are bound to change the way consumers shop forever, if not now, then certainly in the years to come.

Style.com – Gathering Moss
Sarah Mower at Style.com provides a witty and always insightful peek into the Kate Moss for Top Shop event this week. This is no small business. Philip Green has managed to make this line a pilot project for expanding Top Shop to other markets, particularly the US. Not only will the line bow at Top Shops around the world, it will also be sold at Colette in Paris, Barney’s in America and 10 Corso Como in Milan. Mr. Green was even on hand to provide some sales assistance himself. Clearly, this is a business he is counting on.

The Daily Telegraph – Farewell to Floaty and Flirty
Is this a harbinger of Chloe’s fast fall, after its fast rise on the fashion scene? At the Daily Telegraph, they have joined the chorus of people questioning the design direction taken by new Chloe’s new Creative Director, Paulo Melim Andersson. One can definitely appreciate a bit of Marni heritage in the collection he showed for A/W 2007, but the question is whether Chloe loyalists are brand faithful or design faithful. As the Telegraph points out, if it is the latter, then there are plenty of other places for girly girls to look for the look that Chloe has become known for over the past 10 years. Clearly, for a large fashion house like Chloe, a change in creative direction like this should be considered carefully as part of a broader strategic exercise. This is no less important to a fashion business than an airline choosing to fly to a new market (did you know Virgin flies to Nairobi?), a cola company changing their age old formulation (New Coke, anyone?), or Colonel Sanders tweaking the KFC recipe (do you like your chicken more crispy?).