Designer snub may hurt sales

SYDNEY: Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of potential export sales may have been put on the line owing to what some are calling the arrogance of Australian designers.
International buyers attending Mercedes Australian Fashion Week (MAFW) last week have accused local designers of overlooking them in favour of local celebrities when it came to seating arrangements as well as ignoring their pleas for private viewings.
In some cases international delegates were denied even general admission to the shows while in others Austrade minders were forced to argue with ushers in their attempts to secure front or second row seating for their charges.
Dissatisfaction with the location of their placement forced at least two London-based buyers, Geoffrey Finch from Antipodium and Lindy Lopes from Austique, to walk out of shows when they were unable to get a clear view of the items showing in the collections. Both are regular attendees at the event.
It is feared their experience, together with similar ones by other buyers from Indonesia, London, and Singapore, may mean they will look at spending their money at London, Paris, New York or Milan fashion weeks instead, putting in jeopardy the $240 million earned by Australian fashion exports each year.
Lopes, who already stocks several Australian labels in her store including Alice McCall, Lover, Camilla and Marc, Wayne Cooper and Alannah Hill, said she had a number of concerns about her treatment at this year's event.
"It's fair to say I haven't felt particularly welcomed in certain aspects. The invites arrived too late so I wasn't able to RSVP to a number of the shows. Even though she tried her best my [Austrade] host had several other delegates to look after it meant I was often on my own so did not have her to argue on my behalf.
Security at the shows was also less flexible and less accommodating than in previous years, Lopes said.
"I'm not going to say I won't come back next year but it's fair to say I will Finch, who attended this year's event with Glen Waldron, a freelance journalist for British Vogue and Nylon, said some of their seating was so appalling the pair "may as well have watched the show in Brisbane". Aussie designers needed to "grow up" and get "more savvy" about how they treated international buyers, he said.
A buyer from Indonesia, who did not wish to be named, said she had rung the sales agents of two designers - one of which was Akira - yet despite leaving messages had not heard from either.
Her Austrade minder confirmed the buyer had rung a third designer who appeared on the schedule, only to be turned away and told the designer had no available viewing spots left.
However Akira spokesperson Penny Culliton said she was unaware of the label's sales team not returning calls - particularly as the phones had been manned well into the evening on each day of the five-day event.
In response to the complaints about invites, Culliton said Akira had sent the invites for international delegates through to event organisers IMG a week before the event, shortly after receiving the delegates list, and IMG had then taken responsibility for forwarding them to the international delegates.
While the label always left additional seating aside for those who hadn't RSVP'd to the event, it was not always possible to accommodate all requests for attendance, she said.
"We never rely solely on the RSVP list. I think to do that would be quite naïve. Having said that we can't find seats for everyone. In some cases we have exclusive deals already wrapped up with people in that same location. We also have to look after our domestic buyers - we can't include international buyers at their expense just because they have arrived from overseas."
IMG head of international marketing Jodi Pritchard said while IMG sent lists of delegates to designers, it was up to them to allocate their own seating arrangements.
"We provide as much information as we can but ultimately the decisions on who sits where is left to the designers."