The many perils of repeating
While the life expectancy of people in Australia is lengthening, the life expectancy of fashion trends is shortening. Even the term ‘fashion’ has been dramatically broadening, so that now garments and accessories are more than ever competing with non-apparel fashion items.
A typical example of this phenomenon can be seen in one of our major shopping centres, where a Nespresso ‘boutique’ has just opened.
For those not in the coffee know, Nespresso (a Nestle product) placed premium coffee into capsules and invited coffee machine makers (the most successful being DeLonghi) to develop machines to take the coffee from capsule to cup, plus some needful frothy milk.
The idea has turned into a craze, not just because it is an easy way to make authentic coffee at home but because it is so awfully fashionable. The same goes for the iPhone. Before products like these started to wear the fashion mantle, the money would have gone schmuttawards.
iPhone is currently at the top of the bell curve while Nespresso is ascending, Products like these put pressure on apparel to be even more irresistible.
Apparel and non-apparel fashion products have one ticking bomb in common: when do you walk away and resist repeating a hot seller?
One craze that I’m watching with interest is Pandora, the wrist decoration that has appealed to thousands of consumers and is kept alive by new editions of the charms that go on the bracelets.
If you were Mr Pandora, would you a) shut up shop and take your considerable profits; b) keep going until the potential market was exhausted; or c) release a whole lot of new decorative products spinning off from the Pandora name?
In my youth I would have dived headlong into c), in middle age I would have chosen b) but now, looking towards a rocking chair and tartan rug, I’d grab a) and put the loot in the bank.
What will Mr Pandora do? Is it better to have had a sell-out and walked away or to have ridden a rocket that turned into a billycart stuck in the mud?
The dilemma of whether to repeat a good story is a challenge to us all – me included. My advice is, don’t. If you walk away leaving the crowd shouting ‘encore’, when you come around with your next product they’ll fall over themselves trying to buy it.
Oz clobber
How interested are Australians in supporting goods made in Australia?
The organisers of The Australia Show, booked at Sydney’s Darling Harbour from July 9 to 11, 2010, will find out. Before that, of course, they will test the waters with the sale of exhibition space.
The show will encompass a wide range of products and services which fit the official definition of ‘Made in Australia’. In general terms a product is made in Australia if it has 50 per cent or more value added in Australia. Applying that to clothing, you might source the fabric from overseas but if cutting, sewing and finishing add more than 50 per cent to the wholesale price of the garment, you can say it is made in Australia.
If you want to reinforce your sew-in label with the green and gold swing ticket adorned with the official kangaroo, it will cost you.
So how will the offer of stand space in a ‘Made in Australia’ exhibition go down with the few clothing companies left who have garments that qualify? You’d have to say it will be a tough sell. The industry is so infiltrated and overrun with Asian imports that Made in Australia is almost invisible.
That’s the widely held view, anyway. But one sector is a stand-out exception: emerging designers.
Because their production runs are so small they cannot import. Moreover, their make is usually expensive enough to easily exceed the value of the imported fabric they use.
The exhibition people have recognised this and are devoting a special section to emerging designers.
These exhibitors will be able not only to show samples for the benefit of retail buyers, but will be allowed to sell stock to the public. It will be possible for them to strut their stuff and make some money at the same time.
The emerging designers would come from the ranks of technical college design students, recent graduates and other young hopefuls working from their mother’s kitchen table.
I hope both the exhibition company and the young designers marry up on this one. Our other two trade shows, Fashion Week and Fashion Exposed, are strictly trade and threateningly expensive for young designers. Moreover, they do not allow sales of goods at the fair and do not invite the public.
The Australia Show won’t give stand space away, of course, but it will offer special payment arrangements to emerging designers. Enquiries: (02) 9531 8396.