Chapter 8

Fashion Marketing Environment

Ethics

In the Fashion industry, laws are set by the government to be followed by so the workers are paid fairly and treated well and rights of consumers. Lately, there is a big issue about the this legal matter, as one of the biggest company Sports Direct has been in news lately about these topics. Dispatches Channel 4 has investigated Sports Direct, the truth behind the discounted shops. I found the documentary which I attached below:

After this has been aired, even politician such as Edward Miliband raised awareness in the his labour party speech that he would banish the 0 hours contract as it is a 'Victorian style practices in a 21st century which is wrong". He would change these into permanent contracts for workers who work the same hours each week. This ensure the employees for a job security and the conditions would be much better if there is a contract.

On dispatches, another point that has been highlighted was misleading a consumer is morally wrong and it is against the law to misconception a consumer's thinking before purchasing a product. Sport Direct deliberately swaps there price tag that shows RRP price and the discounted price. There was an example on a hidden camera that a New product of Nike trainers has been launched on the same day a woman wanted to purchase them, however in her surprise it was already on sale. There is a written law that a new product should be on the shelf within 28 days before changing and discounting the price. In my opinion, Sport Direct are originally selling the products on a discounted prices however labelling them with the original RRP with a massive cross and replacing it with a huge discount. Consumers would think that they are getting a bargain. Also, the psychology of retail consumer behaviour, people are more likely to spend on products that are unnecessary because they are cheap.

Law

There are recent news about Versace ripping off a London designer called Kesh. Kesh designed a shirt for American Apparel back in 2013 which Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn both worn after the release of 'Face le New'. She sold her t shirts for £50 on American Apparel.  In March 2015, Versace is seen with a similar styles, silhouettes and colour palette on the selfridges website asking price £440 for a t shirt. Kesh plans to legally pursue this issue as this is plagiarism.

In my opinion, I think she had every right to sue Versace, even though it is a well know fashion brand.  This is because an artist design should not be ignored and uncredited for, especially all that work and research and development for making that shirt for nothing. 

Chapter 7

High end street Vs Designer 

Chapter 6

Trickle Up and Trickle Down

 

The trickle down effects all relies on the hierarchy of the fashion industry. The haute couture designers are the one who sets the trend that is shown on the catwalk, It then tickles down to highstreet shops that would sell similar style, silhouettes and colour palette with a lesser price tag. The trickle up effect are fashion that are innovated from the the streets. This has been adapted usually by lower income groups that becomes popular, For example, back in the 1950's the tennagers were inspired by the teddy boys look which was never seen before on catwalks. However, the style of the teddy boys was very popular.

Chapter 5

Marketing Mix 

What is a Marketing Mix

Businesses use Marketing mix to highlight the considered points when designing a product and marketing the brand. To have a successful product, there are 10 points to acknowledge such as the quality?, purpose? and safety. All these points are very important as they all represent the product however a product would not be successful without a main target market/audience. In my opinion this is a crucial step as without a target audience, a brand identity would not be establish. Finding a type of customer that fits the criteria- such as customer's wants, needs and how much disposable income can they spend on a product. 

Pricing strategy has 2 approach called skimming and penetration. Price skimming focuses more on maximizing profits by charging the consumers a higher price, the effect of this, is that the product can be priced higher to see if it sales but it doesn't, the company can always lower the price to fit the consumer's need. Penetration pricing strategy, when a company launches a low priced product with a goal of securing market share. Companies uses the technique take a penny off, so the consumer thinks its cheaper than it actually is. An example of this, is a price of a  bag cost £50 not alot of people buy it but if the was shown as £49.99, consumers think they are spending less than £50. The psychology of this is making consumers believe the product is cheap, this is a subtle way to boost sales up.

Business uses the push and pull technique when it comes to promoting a product. The push strategy involves taking the product directly to the customer to encourage them to be aware of your brand before purchasing. The pull strategy is motivating customers to come and seek your brand. Some pull tactics can include word of mouth, sales promotions and discount and mass media production. 

A product/brand could never be successful if the geographic location is not in the right place for it chosen target market as the sales would be significantly affected. For example, if the target audience is for customers that shops in high end designer brands , the shop would not be located in a mass product clothing shops such as primark.

The 4P's has shown me that a product and brand cannot be successful without these main points. It has also widen my eye as the marketing industry is more complex and I realised without the 4P's the company would not thrive for success.
Here is a quick video explaining more about the 4P's

Chapter 4

Fashion Calendar

A Fashion Calendar that listed every major fashion events a year ahead. The website gives you a choose to view it monthly with much more details about the events or a year that gives you a summary, I found this calendar on http://www.britishfashioncouncil.co.uk/. 

Chapter 3

Trend Prediction

A job role of a fashion forecasters has to foresees the upcoming trends and advise companies for the next season's best sellers. They do this by researching and observing the consumer's behaviors, looking at market conditions and they often assess haute couture collections. Fashion forecasters has to be aware and have some knowledge of the seasonal trend colour themes and fashion silhouettes. Trend Predictors has to be vigilant about their targeted customers when forecasting a brand as they need to know what they want and what they need. 

Where do they get this information from?

Trend forecasters collect these trends from reading fashion related articles or the current news, fashion shows, trade shows, fashion related television and even observing celebrities that could influence fashion trends in the future. They are always 3/4 years ahead of fashion trends as there are so much preparations behind the scenes such as communicating with designers the next trends, which they can put their own interpretation on their collections. Huge companies would invest on a fashion
forecaster for them to create moodboards and design colour palettes, patterns and key styles.


A Day in the Life of a Trend Forecaster by SynapticDigital

In my course, we use trend books to inspire us for our projects. In the libary there are wide range of trend books that is available to view such as Tank and Next Look. Whilst looking through them, there were alot of moodboards that a trend forecaster companies have created. It really made a feel of the theme, as it shouted out the colours and the key styles for each particular seasons. Learning more about being a fashion forecaster has really opened by mind as I never thought It was an actual career in the fashion industry. Also, after knowing the fact that they are 3/4 years ahead of fashion made me realise there are so much organising and planning just before a certain trend hit that annual year. This made me more interested about this particular area of fashion and even looked at our job roles that are quite similar to this and found more opportunities that I never knew existed.

Chapter 2

Pop up store

What is a Pop up store?

A definition of a pop up retail shops are temporary store at a specific areas/venue. The purpose of this is to attract consumers long enough with something new, exciting, innovated products while the company brand gets an exposure and create an impact a larger audience. 

Brief

We were give a 3/4 weeks project to show a group presentation with make believe scenario. The aim was to create a pop up store with a group of 3/4 people with a business plan and to help establish a brand name. At the end of the project we would make a business proposal of why we deserve that £15,000 from our lecturer. As a group we had to create a slide about our brand and also record our daily tasks, targets and opinions. 

I was put in the a group with Janna Dendi, Jade Rose and Arty Gohil. As a group we decided to call our business brand Floral Kanji. This was created as we wanted an oriental influence theme to our product. One of the team member suggested Kanji as it is a name of a language in Japan and everyone in the group agreed to it.

Here is our slide show, Floral Kanji:

As the Video did not show up on the slide show presentation, Here is the video below:

Weekly Process Review:

Week 1

In first week of the small assignment, we have been given a a brief and been put in groups of 3/ 4 people. There are 3 of us in the group. I was really excited about this project  and so as my team members. We all organised and agreed to have separate job roles through out this project and before the lesson finishes we would communicate to each other what we found and at the end of the project, we would merge our information together. We also discuss what our brand name will be and what would be our target market. We named our brand 'Floral Kanji' and our target market are for quirky young, fresh students.

Breje (Me) - Product designer
Jade- Visual Merchandiser

Arty- PR.

Week 2 

In the second week, Janna joined our group and we decided she would help us around which was helpful. This week, we did our research by looking on Pintrest, Google, WGSN and Ebay. An hour before the lesson left, we reported to each other what we found. From my research I have found out that festival goers would spend alot of their money on food rather than clothes. Another thing that I found that the weather is predictable so certain days, we might not have a sell out, this would not work with our product as it is designed only for sunny weather.

Week 3
On the third week, me and Janna discuss it would be cheaper for us to make the garments and sell them as it would save us alot of money instead of shipping them or buying in bulk from a whole trader place. Also, it being all manually made by us, each garment would be different therefore, it would be more special and one of a kind.

Week 4
From the original idea of the manually making each garments, I thought it would be ridiculous as the amount of labour time that would have been invested in would be to consuming.But everyone insisted of doing it manually. I looked online and found a website called Ali express which is an online whole trader which they offer free shipping to UK on certain products.

Presentation- I was nervous during the presentation. I didn't speak much in front of everyone as I was too nervous. However, I did brought homemade flowery hairbands and kimono to show everyone the product image we are going for. Our organisation with the slides needs to be improved in the future as it was incomplete and also time management and communication needs to be better, to be able to deliver.

Through out the project, I felt it lacked team worked as not some of the team member were absent which slow down the process of the project. There was a lack of communication and time management through out the process which I personally felt confused in the duration of the planning. However, I felt that I and some other team members worked well as we would exchange email and we would meet up on our break to plan this. Overall, I would of like to worked by myself than working in the team even though I liked the idea of everyone communicating and sharing ideas.