LONDON, United Kingdom — As we enter the dog days of August, The Business of Fashion is going to take a holiday. But before we take our little sabbatical, we have a request for you, our loyal readers.

We were delighted to learn last week that BoF has been shortlisted for the first Dazed Digital RAW Blog Awards, in the fashion category. The awards have now been opened to a public vote — and the competition is fierce. We are honoured to share the nomination with several other excellent fashion blogs, including Jak & Jil, DisneyRollerGirl, and our friends over at the Fashion156 daily blog.

Everyday, thousands and thousands of you around the world log in to www.businessoffashion.com or enjoy our BoF Daily Newsletter on your Blackberries, iPhones and laptops as a free tool for research, intelligence and inspiration in your day to day work in the fashion business. Today, we are counting on you to click here and scroll down to find our BoF logo and vote for The Business of Fashion!

VOTE FOR BoF IN THE DAZED DIGITAL RAW BLOG AWARDS

Share the link with your friends on Facebook, Tweet it to the world and help us win. From all of us at BoF, thank you!

The Business of Fashion in Vogue Korea, May 2008

LONDON, United Kingdom — It’s been awhile since our last BoF update. The past few months have been busy on our end, so forgive us for a solely BoF-focused post to keep you abreast of all the developments on our side in recent months, and to share a little about things to come in the months to come.

We are dot-com: Probably the most noticeable change since our redesign in December is our new domain name: www.businessoffashion.com. That’s right, we managed to secure the dot-com for Business of Fashion despite the fact that some Indian cybersquatters first offered it to us for almost one thousand dollars and then told us they sold it to someone else in the meanwhile. But, in an amazing and mysterious twist of fate, our Managing Editor, Khaleed Juma, happened to find the domain for sale on the Internet for the grand total of $9.99! So, we welcome you to our official dot-com status and invite you to update your links and bookmarks to find us as quickly as possible.

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LONDON, United Kingdom - As we wind down our second year here on The Business of Fashion, I thought it would be interesting take a look back at our most popular articles from the last 12 months in what was quite the eventful year, not only for the Luxury industry, but for the economy as a whole.

With more than 200 posts over the course of 2008, we had much to sort through and have chosen these posts based on the highest number of page views. This resulted in a wide cross-section of articles, from posts that are part of ongoing series like Fashion 2.0, Luxury Outlook and CEO Talk, to others from our travels to Japan and conversations with industry experts.

The drumroll please…

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Anna E Alex, Jewellery designers, Italy

NAIROBI, Kenya - The best thing about Christmas in the fashion business is that all of the creativity that is usually focused on clothes and campaigns is temporarily fixated on the festive season. In the beginning of an annual tradition here on the BoF, we are delighted to share a selection of some of the most creative Christmas cards and holiday greetings that we have received from around the world.

And, to keep you occupied between dinners and decorating, we will continue posting from time to time over the break, including a 2008 Year in Review.

From all of us at BoF, happy holidays to everyone.

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The Business of Fashion

LONDON, United Kingdom – Welcome to The Business of Fashion version 2.0. Just in time for the holidays, we are proud to unveil our new brand identity and beta web design. (RSS and Email subscribers, make sure to click here to see our new look.)

Since the summer, we have been working with the talented Design Science Office, a boutique design agency in London, to create a visual identity to match the voice that BoF has developed over the past two years. In addition, we aimed to improve the navigability of the site and improve the access to our growing archive of content. And voila!

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AMENDMENT: NEW SURVEY LINK NOW AVAILABLE: Click here

About a year ago, we had an overwhelming response to our first reader survey and gained valuable insight into the nature of the Business of Fashion community and helpful feedback on how to improve the website and deliver the best possible reader experience.

As we are about to go into an exciting redesign phase, working with Design Science Office (the team behind the fantastic blog Dezeen), it seems like the perfect time to turn to you again and get your input to ensure you get what you’re looking for from the new design and content.

We would be grateful for your responses to our short 10 question survey. We encourage feedback which is constructive, courteous and honest and in return commit to read everything and consider it as we take things forward.

In the meantime are going to take a bit of a late summer hiatus. We’ll be back for New York Fashion Week in early September with all of the insider news and analysis from the front lines of the fashion business.

You can fill out the reader survey by clicking here. Thank you.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a phone call from Ruth La Ferla, a fashion writer for the New York Times, inquiring about our recent article on the Top 10 Online Fashion Magazines. We ended up having a great discussion about which sites were truly distinctive, how they were using new technologies to step up their performance and reader-engagement, and whether Anna Wintour and the like should be worried about these upstart online editors stealing away their readers and their jobs.

Today, Ruth published an article entitled  “Where the Fashionistas go for a Quick Fix,” which features many of the online magazines from our ranking and ably sums up the reason why these niche sites are gaining more and more attention.

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Readership and subscriptions to The Business of Fashion have continued to grow, largely through a campaign of whispers where one person tells another person who tells another person. This is exactly how we’d like to get around.  So, thanks to all of you for recommending BoF to your colleagues and friends in the fashion business.

With this continued momentum, I thought it was about time we began to deliver more features and content — but I can’t possibly create all this on my own. And so, today I am pleased to welcome our first two contributors to the Business of Fashion, Robert Cordero and W. David Marx.

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Kellogg, the prestigious school of management at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, has announced plans for a business course on fashion — or at least, how fashion can play a role in industries as varied as fast-moving consumer goods to consumer electronics and home computers. ESSEC, the French business school, has an entire MBA program dedicated to a Luxury.  And, fashion and luxury clubs are popping up at business schools around the world, from Harvard to Columbia to London Business School.

These are the latest signs that professional general managers are playing a more prominent role in the fashion and luxury industry. Before the emergence of major luxury groups, first LVMH, and then Gucci Group and Richemont, many fashion and luxury businesses were a family affair — and this is still the case for many brands, most notably in Italy. But, with more and more luxury IPOs and the shift towards managing luxury brands within a portfolio, has also come the need for CEOs who are well versed in brand management, investor relations and supply chain optimisation.

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It’s been exactly one year since we launched The Business of Fashion, and what an adventure it has been. From our first ever post on The Gap to the most recent one on Martin Churba, we have seen our little experimental side project grow into something much bigger than we had ever imagined.

We were pleasantly surprised when, late last year, Shiny Media ranked The Business of Fashion amongst the world’s Top 100 Fashion & Lifestyle blogs:

17. The Business of Fashion: Doing exactly what it says on the tin, this is the blog to go to for a slightly more professional look at the industry, with really good business advice and insider info. Too big to truly be an underdog but too much of a trade secret to be considered a big player, this is one to watch if you want to work in fashion

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