Greg Furman, Founder and Chairman, Luxury Marketing Council

NEW YORK, United States — As the recession wears on, luxury companies are beginning to realise they will have to do more than cut costs in order to survive this downturn. Indeed, for many brands, a fundamental repositioning and reevaluation of their long-standing strategies may be in order.

In this kind of environment, many luxury executives turn to the New York-based Luxury Marketing Council, where their membership enables them to share in the insights and learnings of more than 800 peers and colleagues from across the sector, representing companies as diverse as Bergdorf Goodman, The Carlyle Hotel, and Steinway & Sons, the legendary piano manufacturer. The Council’s reach has also grown in recent years to include international chapters in London and Sao Paolo.

I caught up with the Council’s CEO Greg Furman via e-mail to get his take on the rapidly changing economic and consumer environment, and the implication for luxury brands everywhere.

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The ever-morphing Barcelona dress, courtesy of Karolina Zmarlak

NEW YORK, United States — As global economic woes continue to wear on consumer spending, some fashion and luxury companies are teetering on the brink. Blue chip brands are halting expansion plans in order to focus on survival tactics, while smaller labels with limited resources are faced with the reality of sudden annihilation. It may not seem to be the ideal time to start a new label, but New York-based womenswear designer Karolina Zmarlak remains unfazed.

“All ventures in the business of fashion are daunting because it is an industry that is constantly moving, contradictory, and revenue-challenged,” she argues. “But it would be tragic to not face the demons and complexities by attempting to ‘wait it out.’” Rather than sitting on the sidelines, Zmarlak has jumped into the fashion game with an eponymous Autumn/Winter 2009 collection of directional and versatile clothes that bravely tackles womens’ shifting perception of real fashion value.

Faced with tight personal credit, consumers want more bang for their hard-to-part-with bucks. “We have taken this deeply to heart by enabling each piece to be worn in various, truly distinct ways,” notes Zmarlak’s business partner, Jesse Keyes, adding: “Just as the Parisian woman is famously able to style the same garment in a myriad of ways with accessories, our pieces can be accessorized within their own structure.”

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Stella Ishii, President and Founder of The News Inc.

NEW YORK, United States — At first glance, The News showroom in New York’s SoHo district looked to me like most other fashion showrooms. Rails of clothes hanging in a loft-style space with fashionable young people running to and fro, sending and receiving packages from a stream of couriers coming in and out. But on closer glance, it quickly became clear this was unlike any other showroom I had seen.

For one, two young stylish kids were motoring around the space on their bikes, and even had their own private space reserved for them, for which they could charge rent of $1 per day for use by the showroom’s staffers. Scores of snowglobes, some of which were so old there was no water remaining with which to shake the snow, were carefully gathered on shelves near the waiting area in an unusual collection of trinkets, each with their own story.

And, a special version of The New York Times’ front page was laid out on a coffee table, announcing Barack Obama’s election, interspersed with mock editorial celebrating the successes of Vena Cava, Alexander Wang, and Band of Outsiders, just a few of the recent success stories coming out of this now legendary launching pad for young talent in in the United States.

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Shopstyle.com

NEW YORK, United States — Fashion brands are finally making a real effort online, launching increasingly sophisticated e-commerce sites that often do more business than flagship stores. But as usual, Andy Moss is ahead of the curve.

A British transplant to California’s Silicon Valley, Andy launched fashion shopping site ShopStyle back in 2007. Then described as “a search engine devoted to fashion,” the site set a new standard for shopping online, providing a front-end experience that was more like browsing a fashion magazine or shopping a clothing rack than squinting at thumbnail results.

Today, Andy is on the cutting edge of “social shopping,” a combination of shopping and social networking that’s changing the way we shop for fashion online. Indeed, ShopStyle now offers social features that let people create their own looks and share them with friends, harnessing the “many-to-many” medium of the web to turn consumers into online stylists who inspired each other as they shop.

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Wen Zhou, CEO of 3.1 Phillip Lim. Photo: Akira Yamada

NEW YORK, United States — Mention the name Wen Zhou to the average fashion fanatic on the street, or even ‘important’ fashion editors, and they may shrug their sh0ulders, not recognising the name. But, mention her name to fashion industry insiders, especially retailers and independent fashion brands, and invariably the words “dynamo”, “amazing” and “genius” will be volleyed right back at you.

As CEO of 3.1 Phillip Lim, Wen has earned the respect of the industry for her entrepreneurial mindset and can-do attitude, propelling the 3.1 Phillip Lim business from fledgling start-up to international fashion business—with retail stores in Tokyo, New York and Los Angeles and annual revenues exceeding $42 million—in just over four years.

Wen’s special skills in fabric sourcing, production management combined with sound business judgment have enabled the 3.1 Phillip Lim business to stake out a positioning in the market that is not easily replicated by others, combining a strong design point-of-view from Phillip Lim with high-quality, made-in-China production and accessible price points enabled by Wen’s strong relationships in China. Together, Wen and Phillip make a formidable team.

I recently caught up with Wen in the 3.1 Phillip Lim studio in New York and over lunch in Paris to talk about how she is coping with the economic downturn and the ideas she has up her sleeve for Phillip Lim in the year to come.

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