Ragtrader magazine and www.ragtrader.com.au don’t just provide breaking fashion news and feature content. Below is a preview of what you can expect to read when you head over to our ‘guest’ blog section at www.ragtrader.com.au/blogs.
Fashion brands often talk about the power of the press. Ragtrader asks Sweaty Betty PR founder Roxy Jacenko to reveal one pitch which delivered powerful results for a client in the fashion sector.
Our company constantly monitors overseas fashion trends – and when we got word that US retailers were manufacturing boots for larger legs (I picked up on this on a recent trip to the US) we brought the angle to Australia.
We pitched the idea to Channel 9’s A Current Affair program, linking it back to our footwear client Diana Ferrari. Diana Ferrari had just created boots for larger legs, and this product was included in its latest collection with no fanfare or product launch.
The boots were due to drop in stores in a month [March] and take-up was expected to be in line with the rest of the collection. Within 24 hours of my call to A Current Affair, two camera crews were dispatched – one to Diana Ferrari’s flagship Victoria store to capture plus-size models trying on the boots – the other to Sweaty Betty PR to record my fashion commentary on the topic. With an afternoon’s filming wrapped up, the segment aired five days later on a Monday evening - the biggest day for A Current Affair and the most-watched slot of the show.
As well as this, we had the boots and relevant details listed on the A Current Affair website. Television is the absolute pinnacle of all press coverage and you can see why – there’s already a waiting list for the featured boots. The feature, aired in early February 2010, can be viewed at http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1007589
Vein Wear founder Chris McCallum reveals how boutique footwear players can nail offshore manufacturing.
Each year, 11 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide. Of that figure, Brisbane-based Vein Wear handmake just 10 to 100 pairs in each style. Mass production footwear factories around the world today typically use a ‘conveyor belt’ of workers who are each assigned to a very small section of the shoe-making process and thus do not understand how to make a pair of shoes from beginning to end.
Because each worker is unaware of what the workers before them did, there are no check-points, so if a mistake is made, the shoe will still continue down the line until its faulty completion.
At Vein Wear, however, each shoe is crafted by master cobblers according to old traditions. The label’s head patternmaker, Sen Shi Fu, is a master with over 40 years of experience, and chief cobbler, Mr Bitters, has over 35 years’ experience.
At Vein’s production workshop in Taipei, each cobbler is responsible for the shoe he accepts at his checkpoint. He is also responsible if the next checkpoint rejects the work he has just completed. New cobblers begin their career at the first checkpoint.
Only after three years and four months at the same checkpoint will they have the opportunity to graduate to the next one. After graduating, the cobbler then receives shoes passed up from the checkpoint they worked at previously. Only having masters handling the footwear means every step in the shoemaking process is actually a quality control test.