Many thanks to Lord Andrew Stone of Blackheath for the unique guided tour of the House of Lords and afternoon tea on Wednesday. Leading left to right below, the four selected designers were Francesca Columb, Lisa Larson, Daniela Benson and Georgina Abbott. Lord Stone also provided a fantastic networking opportunity too for each designer. Please click here for further information https://www.fashioncapital.co.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&Itemid=27&id=4594/27/
The Clotheshow Live event on December 2nd – 7th at the NEC Birmingham is providing an outstanding opportunity for 25 designers of ladieswear to sell their collection to a target audience of 181,142 attendees (based on last season’s audited figures). The LFF have managed to secure slightly smaller stands than the usual requirement resulting in a new day rate of £165 compared to the normal cost of £335. Many thanks to Nicky Hill and Sarah Stuckey from Clotheshow Live for supporting LFF and FashionCapital. For further information please click here: www.clotheshowlive.com
To be able to have the opportunity to sell at the world’s largest fashion event is fantastic especially with the current background of gloom and doom being forecasted by the Bank of England stoking fears of stagflation – haven’t heard of this since the 80’s! Gordon Brown meanwhile in trying to keep the business community calm by throwing out the ECs plan to impose the fixed 48-hour working week and a reduction in red tape for small businesses. Unemployment is now 828,700 which was an increase of 11,000 for the month of March (but 1.43m according to Labour force survey!)
So what are we to do in this difficult trading climate? Time to roll up our sleeves and get going! There are always opportunities and we just have to make the most of them. Just look at Morag McPherson from Global Guru. She is now supplying her beautiful skills to retail boutique Questionnaire! How fantastic Morag – well done!
This is where the LFF can help further. We are going to offer each designer a six month free period on the e-commerce site with no strings attached! The FashionCapital boutique enables you to upload 32 images of your collection and start trading straight away by setting up a Paypal account! All sales go straight to you. This trail period is to commence Beg of June for the rest of the year – just in time for those summer sales and Christmas trading. Go for it!
Another key stumbling blocks for designers in today’s market is to find the right manufacturer base. The LFF have been working with Skillfast-UK and we are delighted to announce that, shortly, the FashionCapital site will be able to add an additional list of over 400 manufacturers based throughout the UK. A special mention of thanks here to Mike Bentley, Peter Glover and Debbie Jackson.
That’s it for this week.
Have a great week ahead.
Jenny Holloway
Industry Advisor
