Jenny Holloway

CEO of FashionCapital and Fashion Enter Ltd

As part of the annual membership with FashionCapital you will have access to two one-to-one mentoring sessions with Jenny Holloway, CEO. The first one hour session will take place at the start of your membership and will establish your strategy, develop a plan of action and offer expert advice. The second session will take place after six months to monitor progress, set further goals and keep you motivated.

Jenny Holloway has been working in the fashion industry for over thirty-five years in both the private and public fashion sector. Initially she worked for Littlewoods, was a selector for M&S and a senior buyer for the Arcadia Group before opening her own label Retro. For almost ten years Jenny was Director of her successful brand Retro UK Ltd which included retail boutiques, party plan, wholesaling to major retailers such as John Lewis, Principles for Women and independents. Retro UK also had an excellent export business with key accounts in the Middle East and Europe.

In 2000 Jenny commenced a fashion consultancy business and was approached to be an Industry Advisor on Government funded business initiatives. www.fashioncapital.co.uk began in 2002 and in March 2006 Jenny incorporated Fashion-Enter Ltd (FEL) with the aim to provide a quality based unique network that REALLY impacts on the fashion industry at many levels. Created as a social enterprise the company works within industry to generate self-sustaining funds for skills development and production.

Jenny comments: “Fashion is a fun and vibrant business, however, that’s exactly what it is – a business. Designers, in particular, must ensure that they fully understand all areas of their product and business and working in fashion can be a minefield. It can also be a lonely place too. Designers today have to be the master of all trades and sometimes they need someone experienced to talk to who can offer quality advice. That is exactly why we set up FashionCapital and Fashion-Enter Ltd. We also work with a wide cross section of other sectors of the industry too, particularly manufacturing and logistics, therefore we can provide excellent networking opportunities to all levels of businesses throughout clothing and textiles.”

Today FEL employs over 100 people and produces 12,000 – 15,000 quality garments a week for multinationals such as ASOS, Tesco F&F and Coast; provides a sampling service for independent brands and created the UK’s first SFA approved Fashion Technology Academy (FTA) offering accredited qualifications for fashion and production skills Level 1 – 5.

FEL launched the FTA in 2015 operating alongside the Factory and includes a range of qualifications at Levels 1 to 5 covering the ‘Garment life cycle’ including Stitching, Production, Pattern Cutting and Tailoring. FEL is also the largest training provider of Apprenticeships at levels 3 and 4 within Apparel Manufacturing (fashion) working with employers such as ASOS.com, Marks & Spencer, River Island and Amazon.

In November 2019 FEL launched the Tailoring Academy following funding from the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund and Haringey Council. The Tailoring Academy is a state-of-the-art clothing manufacturing and training facility based which provides specialist skills, job training and apprenticeships for ready to wear and bespoke tailoring. Current clients include Gieves and Hawke, Harrods and Ralph & Russo.

In August 2020 FEL has opened the FC Designer Collective retail shop with Islington Council, LEAP and the GLA to provide business support to local brands and working alongside the garment makers and wholesalers of the famous Fonthill Road. This program will be expanded to include Affordable Workspaces in 2021.

In November 2020 FEL opened a second factory in Wales which is producing up to 20,000 garments a year employing the highly skilled staff that were made redundant from Laura Ashley in Newtown, Powys.