We are excited to share the news that our first published article appears in today’s Financial Times.
The article links the shift in luxury goods production out of Italy to a recent spree of investments and licensing agreements that have taken place between emerging brands and established Italian houses with high quality production facilities. These deals have provided young brands like Proenza Schouler, Derek Lam and Sophia Kokosalaki with access to top class production, solving one of the major headaches of launching a high-end fashion business.
It appears in one of my favourite supplements for getting the low-down on happenings in the fashion business: Financial Times – The Business of Fashion. There are some very interesting reads, including Vanessa Friedman’s Q&A with Dana Thomas, author of the much-discussed book "Deluxe", my friend Robb Young’s take on the new movers and shakers in the fashion business, and Godfrey Deeny’s revelations about fashion’s power brokers in the Middle East.
If you can get your hand on the supplement, it’s definitely worth a read. Unfortunately, none of the content appears on the FT.com site as yet, but in the meantime, please click here to have a look at the article on Italian investments.
Warm congratulations – really well done and a pleasure to read. Coming from the footwear side I definitely team with Kokosalaki’s note of caution – seeing so many newer footwear upstarts crumble in Italy, constant late deliveries and failures and zero credit. I’ve lost count on the missed opportunities due to late deliveries. It’s not even that one asked for favours beyond just getting deliveries on time. The excuses are never-ending. It was listed on the Italian footwear association website that 25 factories are closing a month. No wonder. A further note of caution I’d like to add is that Italy is living much, too much I dare say, on old reputation of quality. There’s also a lot of poor production happening there, still charged at premium prices and with a tendency to not really wanting to acknowledge when mistakes have been made. I was in HK/China last month to check out possible production out there with Italian materials shipped out and results exceeded my expectations. Really quite impressed, besides, their communication is better, they are more organized, more wired on, meetings are followed through with bullet point summaries and cc’ed to all partners involved. As an independent upstart it makes you feel your investment is more secure. Then on a more shallow note perhaps, there’s the added bonus of having 5 star HK at your feet nightime instead of spending nights in some crap Italian village all shut down by 7:30pm and only serving pasta and pizza! It makes you wonder where the hype stops and sanity starts.
Posted by: Camilla Skovgaard – 24 September, 2007 at 11:39 pmBravo
Posted by: Randall – 25 September, 2007 at 8:28 amGood job, Imran. My problem with business is this: in its form/logic, it has been pretty much old and basically about constant changing. Yes, content wise, it is very much different, much more diverse, still people are yearning for a change, not just constant shuffling and changing. Pragmatism is a good day-to-day solution, as far as surving is concerned, but don’t we want something more? So, yes, we all want a truce, but we also want ideas. As Hedi Slimane put it: ideas first, and then all the rest. Best,
Posted by: Marko – 25 September, 2007 at 1:50 pmReally interesting article. Interesting how the “make” or “buy” relationship translates in fashion.
Posted by: Farhan – 25 September, 2007 at 7:09 pmIt’s a pity I was unable to grab the FT and supplement. Keep up the great work. It has been very insightful to read this blog ever since I discovered it. Btw, I have created a question on Ziitrend for users to predict which luxury goods company is most likely to go public in 2008. Techcrunch posted about this new tool and I thought it would be a good way to see which company is most expected to go public in 2008. Chi Wai chi-wai.com
Posted by: Chi-Wai – 28 September, 2007 at 12:02 pmCongratulations on the publication. Sadly, Down Under I missed this one, but I have to agree with the comments Camilla posted above. Asia should no longer be equated with shoddy: Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, for various apparel items, are very good sources.
Posted by: Jack Yan – 30 September, 2007 at 4:37 am