Screenshot of BoF in 2007 | Source: BoF

LONDON, United Kingdom — This week marks a very special milestone in the history of The Business of Fashion: our 5th birthday!

Back in January 2007, I spent one hundred dollars for an annual Typepad subscription and, with the help of a friend, set up a blog at uberkid.typepad.com. I called it The Business of Fashion, cobbled together a clumsy looking header in Powerpoint and started jotting down ideas and observations about the fashion business.

There was no plan! Looking back, it’s a little cringeworthy to see how the blog shifted haphazardly from one subject to the next: reviewing the Milan menswear shows in one post, covering a Giles Deacon party in the next, analysing the luxury childrenswear market and reporting on senior executive shuffles at the Gap, all within the very first month and without any real editorial direction or strategy!

But we’ve come a long way since then and I’ve also learned a great deal about digital publishing. A few of the media properties that I most respect, including The Atlantic and The Guardian, have been buzzing about their “digital first” strategies. But BoF was born digital from day one, which has enabled us to take a particularly lean and responsive approach to publishing.

Indeed, one of the great strengths of digital – an inherently conversational medium – lies in the on-going dialogue it enables between content creators and the communities they attract. Rather than simply broadcasting to a passive audience, BoF has slowly but surely shaped an editorial voice that reflects the feedback and interests of our growing community of readers.

Through feedback from this community and generous advice from online fashion pioneers like Diane Pernet and Jason Campbell, I quickly learned that one of the most useful things I could offer the nascent fashion blogosphere was opinionated analysis and advice for professionals working in the global fashion business. Rather than simply reporting news, which was widely published elsewhere and rapidly becoming a commodity, I focused on trying to make sense of the news. As it turned out, the timing couldn’t have been better as the fashion industry would soon find itself navigating unprecedented change driven by the forces of economic crisis, rapid globalisation, and, of course, the digital revolution.

In April 2007, a few months after launching BoF, I was invited to the Harvard Business School Retail & Luxury Goods conference to speak on a panel alongside a group of highly respected luxury experts. At one point, the moderator, Milton Pedraza of the Luxury Institute, began asking the panel about social media, in particular a website called Facebook, which by then had attracted a user base of around 20 million people. “How will these new social platforms impact the fashion and luxury world?” Mr Pedraza asked.

Having spent several months immersed in the world of blogging, I ventured that I saw some real, long-term potential for the fashion and luxury sector in social media. After all, if consumers were spending more time on these platforms, it was only logical that brands looking to reach them would need to do the same.

But suffice it to say that my fellow panelists did not see it that way. In fact, my ideas were at best politely dismissed, at worst publicly ridiculed. But when the panel had ended, Mr. Pedraza leaned over and whispered some encouraging words in my ear: “I think you’re onto something,” he said. “Stick with it.”

And so I did. It was one of many helpful pushes I have had along this journey. But, in particular, Mr. Pedraza’s gentle push helped me to realise that by exploring the exciting potential of fashion’s digital future, BoF had an opportunity to add something genuinely distinctive to the fashion dialogue. I had no budget for marketing or PR, so all I could do was create good content and hope our audience would keep coming back and spread the word about BoF to their friends and colleagues.

A year or so later, I realised that for BoF to reach its potential, I had to build a team. In the summer of 2008, Tokyo-based W. David Marx became our first correspondent and New York-based writer Robert Cordero began curating the BoF Daily Digest, a hand-picked selection of the most interesting and important fashion news stories of the day, something we started doing so that the members of our community wouldn’t have to sift through the mountains of daily fashion news themselves.

As for our original articles, we made a special effort to create content that wasn’t available anywhere else. First, BoF became known for a series on the basics of setting up a fashion business. Soon after, I launched Fashion 2.0, our popular on-going inquiry into of the powerful digital currents that are reshaping the business of fashion, and we were often the first in the fashion press to examine new platforms like Tumblr and new trends like social curation.

Next came CEO Talk, our signature series of in-depth interviews with the industry’s top business leaders. We spotted young designers early, as well, and were amongst the first to introduce Camilla Skovgaard, Thomas Tait, and Huishan Zhang to the world. And finally, our live interview series Fashion Pioneers has attracted industry insiders and consumer audiences alike, both virtually and in-person, to hear from inspiring fashion luminaries like Natalie Massenet, Jefferson Hack and Nick Knight.

So, what have we learned from all of this? In today’s environment of media abundance, the power of opinion channeled through analytical editorial, curated news and live events has made BoF a daily destination for a growing number of fashion professionals. We cut through the clutter. Compared to other websites with similar stature and audience, we produced less content, but ensured the highest quality possible, working with a small but highly agile and global network of editors and contributors, who generously contributed their time to the BoF cause.

I first met Vikram Kansara virtually, reading his intelligent feedback on BoF articles in our lively comments section. After we met for tea in London, Vikram started writing for BoF as a contributing editor focused on Fashion 2.0 and is now our managing editor. Several other individuals from the BoF community have also come on board since then, including fashion legend Colin McDowell, leading international expert in the finance of fashion Pierre Mallevays, and Divia Harilela and Timothy Coghlan, our on the ground experts in the enormously important Chinese market, building depth and breadth into our editorial voice. Many, many others have contributed articles from time to time and I am immensely grateful for the time and energy that all of these talented individuals have dedicated to BoF over the years.

But none of this would have been possible without our single greatest asset: the global BoF community. Everywhere I have traveled over the past five years, from Tokyo to Jakarta, Vancouver to Mumbai, Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv, and more than 25 other countries in between, I have been warmly welcomed and hosted by this community. Generous individuals and organisations have opened my eyes to a global industry that is filled with inspiring stories of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship and shared the best and brightest of their local fashion industry with me, so that I could share it with all of you.

Over the recent holidays, this community revealed its wonderful diversity in a rather spontaneous way. When I sent out a short holiday greeting to our followers on Twitter, Sharon Caufield was one of the first to respond with a note that said she was writing from Craigavon, Northern Ireland. It made me wonder: who else was following our tweets on Boxing Day and where were they from? So I asked the community and within minutes, hundreds of tweets had poured in, representing every inhabited continent and more than 80 countries.

With this truly global community in mind, I am very pleased to announced that, alongside Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram, BoF has just launched a Weibo presence. Chinese-language readers can now stay up to date on the latest news and analysis from BoF at weibo.com/businessoffashion.

As I look ahead to 2012, the future of BoF looks brighter than ever. We aim to bring you the best analysis, the most inspiring stories and the first insight into the players, platforms and business models that are reshaping the business of fashion as we know it.

Happy New Year! And I hope you’ll stick with us, as it seems this is only the beginning of our journey.

Imran Amed,
Founder and Editor-in-Chief

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.

A growing writing team: Our network of global contributors continues to grow. From South Africa to India to Japan, I’d like to thank them all for their ongoing contributions and insights from the front lines of fashion in their hometowns. Thank you especially to our newest international contributors Milisuthando Bongela in Johannesburg and Sita Wadhwani in New Delhi and recent guest contributors Natasha Malhotra in Mumbai and Meeta Roy in Paris. Robert Cordero has moved on from the Daily Digest to become our New York Editor along with Vikram Alexei Kansara who focuses on Fashion 2.0 and W. David Marx who continues to provide us with the smartest Japanese fashion intelligence around. And, congratulations are in order for our sporadic (but much loved) Friday columnist Lauren Goldstein Crowe who has just published her first book, The Towering World of Jimmy Choo, which has received praise from Tom Ford, Diane von Furstenburg and Domenico De Sole. Well done!

Press coverage: Our Giles Deacon video series garnered press coverage around the world, for which we are very grateful. And you can be sure that we are developing the ideas for our next designer interview which remains top secret (but very exciting) for now. Stay tuned. We’d also like to thank Jefferson Hack for plugging BoF on Style.com via his ultra-cool avatar, Leon Bailey Green for including us in The Independent’s ranking of the most influential in the UK’s online fashion space, Alexandra Bruell for covering BoF in PR Week, Rebecca Suhrawardi Austin for her chit-chat on Paper Magazine, and Vanessa O’Connell for seeking our input on a couple of recent Wall Street Journal articles on Christian Lacroix and the ever expanding world of discounted luxury goods. Thanks to all for spreading the BoF spirit.

Social media: Right from the inception of The Business of Fashion, we have been avid proponents of social media for fashion communication, and we have been anticipating the ongoing developments and growing (albeit slow) acceptance of these tools by the fashion establishment. To stay on top of the latest BoF maneuverings, join more than 3000 BoF readers following us on Twitter and 1500 members in our Facebook group, and be amongst the first to join our LinkedIn group as well.

The O-Space (for now): Another design element that we hope you are enjoying is our evolving BoF brand identity, which features the designs of an emerging talent we are excited about, each month. Most recently we have highlighted the sexy stilettos of Camilla Skovgaard, a notable London-based shoe designer whose business keeps on growing, despite the economic turmoil. Think of this space as a place to honour and showcase the world’s best emerging fashion design talent. There’s only one thing — we’re not entirely thrilled with the name ‘O-Space’ and we’d like to throw it out to all of you to help us come up with a name that is better suited to this place of honour, right in the heart of our logo. We’re taking suggestions!

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…

1. Fashion 2.0 | Top 10 Online Fashion Magazines - This article, ranking online fashion magazines from incumbent media players like Style.com and Vogue to emerging upstarts like Fashion156.com and Hintmag, caught the attention of The New York Times, resulting in almost 10,000 page views and flurry of comments from BoF readers.

2. Luxury Outlook 2008 | How much padding does that luxury cushion have? – Back in January, while some were still arguing that the luxury industry would be immune to any economic slowdown, we were amongst the first to report that the luxury industry would not be spared. Not in the slightest.

3. Everybody’s talking about | Men’s Underwear - Amongst others, David Beckham’s campaign for a brand new line of underwear by Emporio Armani was the latest sign of the growing popularity of designer underwear amongst a new generation of brand-conscious men.

4. Japanese Women | From Luxury to Yuru-Nachu – From Tokyo, BoF Contributing Editor W. David Marx dispatched an interesting article highlighting a trend for more relaxed, natural fashion for women in one of the world’s most fashion forward style capitals.

5. Tokyo | The decline of big brand luxury – On a trip to Tokyo in June, even before the subsequent market meltdown exacerbated the deterioration of the luxury business in Japan, I learned of an emerging trend drawing Japanese consumers away from big Western brands and towards innovative brands providing a more special, personalised experience.

6. Rad Hourani | Self-styled –  We took the opportunity to get to know Rad Hourani’s budding talent a bit better, revealing a confident designer whose vision had been honed during his young career as a stylist in Montreal, with no formal fashion training whatsoever.

7. CEO Talk | Natalie Massenet, Founder and Chairman of Net-a-Porter - In our first CEO Talk, Natalie Massenet, frequently described as one of the most influential women in the fashion business, spoke to us about NET-A-PORTER and her plans for the burgeoning online luxury retailer during the downturn. 

8. Benjamin Bixby | It’s all about merchandising – During London Fashion Week in September, I spoke to Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 of Outkast) at a Harrods event about setting up his new menswear collection, Benjamin Bixby. Lesson number one? It’s all about merchandising. 

9. Everybody’s talking about | Fashion phones – We shared our views and analysis on an emerging luxury category which has been getting a lot more interest from fashion brands: the fashion phone. Not all players have been approaching the category with a long-term, strategic view.

10. Q&A | The lowdown on H&M Comme des Garçons – Our colleagues at MEKAS in Tokyo shared this interview with the H&M’s top brass on BoF to better understand the thinking and strategy behind their unexpected but highly-successful collaboration with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons.

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.

Katy Baggott Ltd, Fashion Agent, London

Diane Pernet, Fashion Blogger, Paris

Michael Angel, Fashion Designer, New York

Gilt Groupe, Online Fashion Retailer, New York

Brooke Taylor and Nana Aganovich, Fashion Designers, Hong Kong and London

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!

The first major change you will notice is our new logo. I noticed that readers and subscribers were beginning to use the BoF moniker instead of our full name (which admittedly can be a bit of a mouthful), so we decided to integrate ‘BoF’ into our visual identity as well. In the coming months you will also see this core identity expand into a canvas to highlight the designs of fashion designers and illustrators from around the world.

As for the site structure, it was important to give our readers better access to the most read BoF content of all time (The Business of Fashion: Basics) as well as the most popular articles from the past month. And, we have also added functionality to enable you to share articles with your colleagues via Email, Facebook, Twitter and de.licio.us.

Best of all, we have lots of new content planned for 2009, including a proprietary video series called “Inside the Studio” and more opinionated analysis from new columnists and contributors, all in the original BoF spirit.

Attached is a PDF which I have marked up to highlight some of the newest features on The Business of Fashion. In the meantime, explore BoF Beta and let us know what you think. I am really looking forward to your feedback.

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.

The most interesting takeaway from the article was that some niche fashion sites, like Hintmag, have been able to secure substantial monthly sponsorship dollars from major advertisers like Gucci, which currently has a full-sized video advertisement on the Hintmag site. (I will reserve comment on the quality and impact of the Gucci ad itself.)

Nonetheless, for truly distinctive sites with well-curated and original content and good audience numbers, it seems that much more value may be captured from one-off sponsorship deals like this as opposed to the use of advertising banners on a pay-per-impression basis.

One thing that is not covered in the article is the potential of a multi-channel approach, where readers are given a variety of options of interacting with content online and offline. Coincidentally, the undisputed leader in this area, at the moment, is New York Times T Magazine which sets the bar for everyone else, using video, blogs and great photography to deliver a truly outstanding user experience.

Photo courtesy of UNvogue.com and the New York Times.

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.

You may have already been enjoying our new BoF Daily Digest. There is so much clutter, gloss and noise around the fashion business on the Internet, that we thought an edited selection of the day’s most intelligent news and features about the fashion business would be useful for BoF readers.

As Katlin from Urple commented yesterday “I definitely can’t keep up with all the articles coming out, but this helps narrow it down to the ones I’m interested in. Now, I just need to make time to actually read them, but at least I know I can find them here!” I couldn’t have said it better — this is exactly what the Daily Digest is about.

This will be the place to come everyday for only the most intelligent and informative news . The BoF Daily Digest will be published each day by 3pm London/10am New York, and will appear in your email inbox first thing the next morning if you are an email subscriber. The Daily Digest will be edited by the talented Robert Cordero, who is also one of the key people behind JC Report. Robert is also a great business writer who will also contribute feature articles to BoF from time to time.

Some of you may remember the name W. David Marx from my trip to Japan. I felt like I had only just begun to tap the well of David’s expertise, and so he will be giving us the scoop on everything that is Japanese fashion.

Expect David’s first feature in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can check out the fascinating article he wrote on the changing brand value A Bathing Ape (aka BAPE), the Japanese wunder-brand founded by Nigo. David is probably the world’s foremost expert on BAPE as he wrote his master’s thesis on the topic.

Welcome to both David and Robert and we hope you will enjoy our new features.

Do you have any feedback about how we can continue to improve The Business of Fashion? Don’t be shy. Tell us what you think.

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.

Enter the likes of Robert Polet, chief executive of the Gucci Group, whose background as a senior marketer in Unilever’s ice cream division raised many an eyebrow when he joined the company in 2004. Since then, he has gone on create clear definition for Gucci’s brand portfolio and achieved his objective of doubling Gucci Group’s revenues and increasing profitability through a combination of operational improvements, brand building and retail expansion.

However, professional managers in fashion do need to be cut from a different cloth — so to speak. They also need to be respectful of the creative process and understand the unique motivations of the creative talent which underpins the success of any fashion business. For example, Mr Polet seems to have understood that if you suppress that creativity, you are left with very little. A great supply chain, magnificent investor relations and a beautiful brand are not of much use in fashion if you don’t have an equally compelling product.

Perhaps Permira, the embattled private equity owner of Valentino Fashion Group and its brother company Hugo Boss, which lost another senior manager this month, could take a few lessons themselves from the Kellogg course.