Louis Vuitton Incheon Airport, Seoul | Source: Inluxe

S.Koreans go mass-market, online for luxury goods (Reuters)
“Sixty years ago, war-torn South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Now it is the world’s 13th largest economy and a magnet for luxury goods, prying open the wallets of its wealthy people as well as tourists. Indeed, the country’s appetite for high-end labels has led to the christening of a Louis Vuitton handbag as the ‘three-second bag’ for its ubiquity, with one spotted every few seconds on the streets of the capital Seoul.”

Simons For Dior? (Vogue)
“Dior is said to be finalising its contract with Raf Simons, as reports escalate that he has been hired as the label’s new creative director replacing of John Galliano… If reports by WWD are true, the move may mark a change in Dior’s design aesthetic - Simons being known for his minimal, futuristic, modern looks.”

Fendi CEO to become head of Bulgari (Reuters)
“ LVMH said on Monday that Michael Burke, head of Italian fashion brand Fendi, would become chief executive of jeweller Bulgari in February as part of a management reshuffle following its acquisition. As part of the deal completed over the summer, Bulgari Chief Executive Francesco Trapani took over the chairmanship of LVMH’s watch and jewellery division and a replacement for him at the helm of the Italian jeweller was expected to be found.”

Exotic India Wrapped in Chanel (IHT)
” The collection the designer showed last week was an ode to India — but emotionally it was pinned to Paris…Compared to Mr. Lagerfeld’s previous interpretations of Coco in Moscow or last year’s Paris/Byzantium show, the mood was restrained. That, no doubt, fits more accurately the current financial mood and the spirit of potential customers.”

Refinery29: Boutique Fashion and Design for All (International Business Times)
“Now, through Refinery29, their rapidly growing fashion and design startup, they’re exposing this fashion-forward independents to an insatiable audience of readers and consumers seeking to define their style. ‘Make it your own. That’s the most important thing,’ says von Borries, describing the ethos of Refinery29 and the changing role of fashion industry brands. ‘[Our company] is all about empowering personal style.’”

“When you look at the most popular blogs, each one has a very distinct style and they’re not all the same….even with street style blogs, you know what a Tommy Ton photograph looks like.”

Tavi Gevinson, commenting on the success of her blog Style Rookie at the L2 Innovation Forum, alongside Christene Barberich of Refinery29, Lauren Sherman of Fashionista.com, and BoF’s Imran Amed.

Over the course of the day, three important themes emerged: the power of disruptive thinking, the power of listening and the power of iterative development.

The Power of Disruptive Thinking

“Disruptive Thinking” was the title of a talk by Luke Williams, a fellow at global innovation firm Frog Design, author of Disrupt, and one of the event’s most interesting speakers. Beginning his talk by tracing the origin of the word “competition” to the Latin word competere, meaning to “sit together,” Mr. Williams implied that competitors are a group that’s agreed to appear at the same time and play by the same rules. Competition leads to incremental change, while real innovation is about “disruptive thinking” that breaks previous patterns of thought, he said, identifying Red Bull, Zipcar and Seinfeld as examples of innovative products that challenged fundamental assumptions in their respective markets — soft drinks, rental cars and sitcoms — and earned tremendous success.

The Power of Listening

Tavi Gevinson, Imran Amed and Christene Barberich | Photo: Mike Matas

A panel of fashion bloggers including Tavi Gevinson, Lauren Sherman of Fashionista, Christene Barberich of Refinery 29, and BoF’s own founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed — a group that instinctively understands the conversational nature of digital media — first raised the importance of having immediate feedback from the consumers of their content. “I know within minutes if a story is successful,” noted Ms. Barberich. “You have to listen.”

For luxury and fashion brands, consumer feedback gathered on the social web is something C-level executives must personally monitor, Mr. Amed advised. “Don’t delegate social media,” he said. “CEOs and CMOs also need to listen and respond.”

The ability to digitally listen, respond and nurture a one-to-one relationship with the consumer is going to transform the way companies do business, ushering in a “thank you economy,” said Greg Vaynerchuk, a self-trained wine expert and social media consultant to companies like Google and Disney, who gave one of the most compelling presentations of the conference. “The next battleground is caring,” said Mr. Vaynerchuk, who has earned over 850,000 followers on Twitter (@garyvee) and attracts over 90,000 viewers per day to his wine-focused webcast, “simply by responding to Twitter queries.”

Indeed, Mr. Vaynerchuk declared search.twitter.com to be “the most important site on the internet today” because it enables anyone to monitor and respond to what millions of real people are saying in realtime about a particular brand, business, category or topic. It’s about the “humanisation of business,” he emphasised. Success will come through “outcaring everyone.”

But listening is not just about gathering tactical feedback and cultivating more caring relationships with consumers. Carefully monitoring and engaging in conversations with and amongst consumers is essential to implementing the kind of iterative innovation strategies that, paired with disruptive thinking, are most likely to succeed in today’s increasingly unpredictable market.

The Power of Iterative Development

“Predictability is at an all time low,” said Frans Johansson, an entrepreneur, author of The Medici Effect and another of the day’s most dynamic speakers. “A predictable path to success does not exist,” he said. Rather, a more reliable way to innovate is to look for new ideas in unpredictable places, then take an iterative approach to developing them, advised Mr. Johansson. That means being flexible enough to take the “smallest executable step” towards a goal, then test, learn and repeat — an approach that’s largely inspired by Agile software development, an adaptive process that emphasises customer collaboration and responsiveness over strict road maps and plans.

Mr. Johansson illustrated the principle with the example of the Ice Hotel in his native Sweden. Interestingly, he explained, the world’s first ice hotel was initially conceived as an “ice exhibit” and later became an event and exhibition hall for artists. It was only when visiting backpackers could not find a room in the local town and asked permission to spend the night in the exhibition hall, placing their sleeping bags on top of reindeer skins, that the idea for the ice hotel was born.

Innovation in Practice

Later in the day, a panel entitled “The Elevator Pitch” highlighted a group of bright young entrepreneurs who were putting the power of disruptive thinking, listening and iterative development into practice.

Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, presented her event-focused, “Netflix for fashion” service that’s notable for selling fashion as an experience, not a product. Interestingly, as the startup grew, Ms. Hyman realized that her service was proving to be a great way for consumers to sample brands they might later buy and, consequently, a powerful customer acquisition channel for traditional online retailers like Neiman Marcus, an area of the business she is planning to expand.

Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna, co-founders of BirchBox, presented their subscription sampling service for beauty products. The company delivers a box of beauty samples to paying members once a month, a concept based on the insight that, in the beauty business, there is a strong correlation between sampling and sales, especially if the samples are well curated and accompanied by compelling content.

The last “pitch” was from Vivian Weng, co-founder of FashionStake, a company whose startup diaries have appeared on BoF over the last few months. Since launch, the company has embraced change and learnt to iterate, significantly revising their original business model based on consumer feedback. Their new concept flips the traditional flash sale model on its head, allowing consumers to pre-order fashion for a substantial discount, while helping the emerging designers they carry to cut inventory and storage costs, fund production and better optimise supply and demand. But whether they can make this new model work remains to be seen.

The current explosion of digital fashion innovation is driving the continuous creation of exciting new businesses, but according to Mr. Johansson, “the average lifespan of a company is getting shorter and shorter.” No matter how compelling the initial concept may seem, the most successful startups will be the ones that measure everything they do and are agile and lean enough to evolve quickly as fresh evidence emerges.

Thanks to Mike Matas for the insipring images and video of the day. Vikram Alexei Kansara is Managing Editor of The Business of Fashion

LONDON, United Kingdom —Today, the BoF team is busy preparing for our first FASHION PIONEERS interview with Jefferson Hack, Editorial Director of Dazed Group, to be held this Thursday at London’s Sanderson Hotel. Tickets for the event are completely sold out and a mix of BoF readers and friends from London’s fashion community will be joining us.

But, we want as many people as possible to participate in the interview. So, we are delighted to announce that in addition to a livestream on BoF, our friends from across the fashion and luxury blogosphere have graciously agreed to help us bring FASHION PIONEERS to the world. The event will be live streamed on the following sites:

United States: Refinery29 | Tavi Gevinson | Fashionista.com | JC Report

United Kingdom: Style Bubble | Fashion156

France: A Shaded View on Fashion | Luxury Society

Philippines: Bryanboy

Germany: Les Mads

We invite you all to tune in. And while you are watching, please send questions for Jefferson Hack to our Twitter account @_BoF_ using the hashtag #pioneers.

The livestream begins at 2pm New York | 7pm London | 8pm Paris and Berlin | 2am Manila (that’s for you, Bryanboy!)

Fashion Pioneers is presented in collaboration with Morgans Hotel Group and will be filmed by Pundersons Gardens

Jennifer Aniston by Steven Klein | Source: W Magazine

NEW YORK, United States — In recent seasons, fashion brands have learnt to think like publishers, creating original digital content to earn attention and attract fans who will carry their message across the internet. But the reverse is also true: squeezed by shrinking advertising budgets, traditional content creators like magazines are learning to think like retailers, embracing e-commerce to open new revenue streams and monetise their content.

“Publishers are the number one generators of purchasing intent for brands every day, but are being allocated an ever shrinking amount of ad dollars,” said Philippe von Borries, co-founder and publisher of popular fashion website Refinery29.com.

Indeed, “intent generators” like magazines are losing their fair share of sales revenue to “intent harvesters” like shopping sites at the end of the purchasing process, observes internet entrepreneur Chris Dixon in an insightful blog post entitled “A Massive Misallocation of Online Advertising Dollars.”

Mr. Dixon suggests that better techniques for tracking how publishers generate purchase intent could lead to a more favorable allocation of advertising dollars, allowing content sites to focus purely on producing content. But many magazines are hedging their bets, becoming both “intent generators” and “intent harvesters” by launching their own online shops and integrating them into their editorial platforms.

SHOPPING CHANNELS

Time Inc’s key fashion title InStyle first launched InStyle Shopping back in 2007, letting consumers browse and buy an edited array of products from retailers like Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Bergdorf Goodman, and earning the magazine a share of the sales revenue. According to Simeen Mohsen, InStyle’s director of digital business operations, InStyle Shopping has “moved more than $10 million in product since launch.”

While InStyle declined to quantify exactly what this number means in terms of revenue for the magazine, other online publications and blogs earn 8 to 12 percent on clicks that lead to successful sales via affiliate programmes. Even if InStyle only earned about half as much — say 5 percent — this would translate to $500 thousand in revenue since 2007.

But ShopStyle, the social shopping engine that has powered InStyle Shopping since launch, states on their website: “The rate you are paid per click depends on a number of factors, including how often clicks result in sales for the retailer, the amount of each sale, and whether those products are returned for a refund. As a result, the rate you are paid can vary over time.”

Building on the success of InStyle Shopping, Time Inc. recently made a strategic move to deepen the integration of e-commerce across InStyle.com. In January, the publisher acquired StyleFeeder, a personal shopping engine that uses pattern recognition technology to make product recommendations. StyleFeeder is expected to be woven throughout InStyle’s website and replace the current partnership with ShopStyle. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Fran Hauser, head of digital strategy for the group that manages InStyle, explained: “Our editors are generating significant consumer demand for products in the retail market. And what StyleFeeder allows us to do is share in that value creation.”

InStyle isn’t the only magazine that’s been integrating e-commerce into its offering. Last November, Condé Nast’s Lucky magazine added online shopping to its editorial platform, bringing intent generation and intent harvesting together in one destination. “We felt strongly that we wanted to weave the eboutique into Luckymag.com rather than create a separate ecommerce site,” said Mary Gail Pezzimenti, Lucky magazine’s web director. “We believe that women want to shop alongside great fashion how-to advice, styling videos, fashion news and galleries of great outfits or hairstyles.”

Independent fashion titles have also been experimenting with e-commerce. Last Autumn, AnOther Magazine launched AnOther Shop, an online boutique with specially commissioned merchandise, from artworks by Jake and Dinos Chapman to laptop cases by Gareth Pugh. Then, a couple of months later, AnOther Magazine launched AnOther Loves, a product recommendation engine that sits alongside, but separate from AnOther Shop. It’s a bit like a collective blog, with product picks crowdsourced from a carefully selected list of contributors. “We wanted to turn this collection of desirable goods into a collaborative stream, and with a little semantics have realised this could be very useful for recommendations,” said Alistair Allan, digital director at Dazed Group which publishes AnOther.

CURATED COMMERCE

Magazine brands are also positioning themselves to generate and harvest purchase intent beyond their websites. During London Fashion Week in February, AnOther Loves teamed up with London department store Liberty on an initiative called AnOther Loves Liberty, a curated selection of Liberty products that appeared on AnOther Loves, as well as on Liberty’s website and at their Tudor-style flagship.

Partnerships with sample sale sites have also been popular. Lucky has teamed up with Net-a-Porter’s online outlet, theOutnet.com, to host flash sales curated by Lucky editors, Hachette Filipacchi’s Elle magazine has a deal with Rue La La and Vogue is partnering with Gilt Groupe to let consumers shop select products from the current issue.

SHOPABLE ADVERTISING

A few weeks ago, Vogue also launched an iPhone app designed to make the magazine’s advertising shopable. Called Vogue Stylist, the app is loaded with styling advice and monthly trends supplied by Vogue editors, alongside products advertised in the magazine, which consumers can browse, mix and match with items uploaded from their own closet, and ultimately click to buy. “Vogue Stylist pairs a user’s wardrobe with products from Vogue advertisers to produce a look that is both chic and new,” said Holly Tedesco, integrated marketing director at Vogue. Using the camera built into the iPhone, the app even allows readers to scan and shop physical ad pages in Vogue’s print issue.

FULL INTEGRATION

But some magazines are going beyond branded shopping channels, curated e-commerce partnerships and shopable advertising. They are integrating e-commerce directly into their center-of-book editorial. This month, W magazine launched a shopping guide alongside images of covergirl Jennifer Aniston, with numbered bullets — and links to external shopping sites — that correspond to the clothing Ms. Aniston wears. Indeed, the integrated shopping guides appear in all of W’s fashion spreads for April.

If this kind of deep integration of commerce and core editorial content appears to pose an inherent conflict of interest, it’s worth remembering that at fashion magazines, these lines have long been blurred. Across the industry, the products featured in editorial are often a function of a magazine’s advertisers.

Furthermore, in the real lives of fashion consumers, magazines and shopping are already integrated. People have used magazines as inspirational product guides since their very inception, a behaviour that’s even easier now that editorial sites and online shops are just a click or tab away from each other. So why shouldn’t publishers offer shopping services that streamline the process for consumers and capture a share of the sales revenue that’s rightfully theirs?

That’s not to say that an independent stylistic point of view is not important. It’s tremendously important. It’s what attracts readers in the first place. Going forward, the most successful magazines will be those who are able to maintain their unique point of view, while capitalising on content that’s shopable. A contradiction? Not necessarily. A challenge? Definitely.

“Over the next few months we will be launching several new commerce products,” said von Borries of Refinery29. “We firmly believe that commerce should be an integral element of a digital content site that features new fashion products, trends and designers every hour. Commerce and community also belong together. Whoever does not embrace the two will lose out in the long run.”

Indeed, people love to shop, but even more than that, they love to shop together. While forward-thinking youth apparel brands like Vans have experimented with realtime social shopping, letting users share the experience of customising shoes, we’ve yet to see a content site that lets readers explore and shop fashion together, in realtime.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is Managing Editor of The Business of Fashion

Christian Louboutin Laceups, courtesy of Jak and Jil

NEW YORK, United States — In seasons past, industry-watchers have spoken of the growing presence of bloggers at the New York shows, but this is the first season where bloggers have come to New York from all over the world, gaining backstage access, front-row seats and even juicy scoops, in a full-on, international blogger invasion. Bryanboy is here from Manila. Susie Bubble is here from London. And Julia and Jessie from Les Mads are here from Germany.

What’s more, at many of the shows, bloggers and web editors have been seated together, allowing for some spontaneous exchange and an opportunity to meet the faces behind some of the finest fashion websites around. Already I have met the super-smart Tommye Fitzpatrick of Fashionologie, the stylish Christene Barberich of Refinery29 and streetstyle maven Phil Oh of Streetpeeper.

But most of all, I was delighted to meet Tommy Ton, the man behind Jak and Jil, which recently won the public vote for the best fashion blog in the Dazed Digital RAW Blog awards. If there was one blog to which BoF was happy to lose, it was to Jak and Jil’s genius photography, editing and fashion moments, as captured by this humble, soft-spoken young man.

I missed Tommy on my recent trip to Toronto, but he introduced himself in the pouring rain outside the Preen show. Truly dedicated to his craft, I subsequently spotted Tommy at show after show, snapping his trademark shots of serious fashion week style — a pair of Louboutin heels here, a feather vest there, in the midst of the New York downpour — before rushing in to catch the shows himself.

In just one year, Tommy has managed to use his blog to build his own offline business as well. Apart from shooting campaigns for Lane Crawford, the venerable Hong Kong department store, he also hosts a blog on the Lane Crawford website and works with hot young designers like Rad Hourani on photo shoots and look books. Based on this kind of trajectory, you can be sure that this is only the beginning for the talented Mr. Tommy Ton.

As for his trademark style of photography which fixates on standout accessories, runway pieces and shoes, Tommy says “I like to think of myself as an editor, more than a photographer,” focusing his attention on the editors, it-girls and models, off the runway.

Imran Amed is Editor of The Business of Fashion