Dualité

As I’m clicking through Net-a-porter, my now #1 stop to dream and contemplate a purchase, has made me realize a couple of more reasons as to why this site is such a success.

Namely, it is a fashion magazine and online store rolled into one. Quite obvious I know, but a deeper contemplation made me realize that online stores in general do not necessarily have the written editorial to tout their new products in a magazine format. Think of reading Vogue and be able to buy exactly what they’re saying is the hottest item of the season on the spot, instead of dragging yourself to the store, hope the store actually carries the item, if not, special order, and go through all the hooplahs one might go through to get the item.

We’re a lazy generation. I admit that many of you probably enjoy the going through the entire “hunting” experience of getting what you want, but I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore our need for instant gratification.

Online stores like Saks, Neiman, Forever 21, Piperlime and Zappos display their array of products and merely announce new arrivals, not quite hyping them up like Net-a-porter does. It also helps that Net-a-porter suggests looks and combinations, and allows you to really zoom in and analyze in full detail parts of the garment since it isn’t possible to do so in person.

I’m not suggesting all stores should start posting online editorials – however, I wouldn’t find it too shabby as a strategy to get more people to buy the products, especially if the store is selling different brands. Holt Renfrew and Ogilvy could perhaps benefit of such a move, especially when Holts already establishes a relationship with their clients with their aggressive call-to-action weekly newsletter. If both stores could offer online shopping and free shipping delivery (for shoes to start), they could definitely boost sales in these harsh economic times. Shoppers tend to shift to online stores when the market is down, so it would only be natural to take advantage of the online medium to keep sales afloat.

With the right combination of marketing and savvy management of an online store and proper, relevant, editorial content, I think clothing stores should consider this as a Plan B.

Image Credit: Versace from Holt Renfrew

I had originally dismissed The Globe and Mail for not reporting any worthy news on fashion other than trends, but I realize that my mistake was that I was looking in the wrong section. If you want some significant news on fashion that excludes trends and top 10 must-haves, you’ll have to venture over to the business section of most newspapers. And there you can find some pretty good articles. Apologies to the Globe and Mail, now I can’t get enough of your Report on Business section!

Which brings me to these very interesting articles that popped up in the last couple of days.

Made in Canada – An in depth look at the advantages and some tips on how to keep a Canadian business going with some examples of some companies who have learned harsh lessons throughout the year. This also highlights that despite China and India’s cheap price, in the long run, it could become more costly to make things overseas as wages will increase over time.

Procter & Gamble links laundry to fashion - Tide, owned by P&G, has come up with a new type of laundry detergent that could be called as the “anti-aging solution” for clothing. Sure it’d be great to have a detergent that didn’t destroy your clothes…but how about buying clothes made of reliable, high quality material instead of the cheap kind if you want them to last?

Sick of Slow Service, Customers Walk -This is an ever growing problem in the retail business as Canadian consumers are fed up with the slow service being offered to them. And here’s another contributing factor of the ailing department store industry:

Department stores lose the greatest amount of business because of frustrated customers leaving empty-handed, with 78 per cent of survey respondents indicating that they have left a department store because of long waiting times.

It looks to me that HBC will really have to put customer service as a priority if they want to lure customers back. It will also need to significantly exceed the kind of service you get at Holt Renfrew (which is to say discriminatory and snooty).

The Gazette (shocking, I know)

Catalogue Yanked -La Maison Simons has decided to pull it’s Fall catalogue from the shelves after receiving numerous complaints of using too thin models on its pages. Although it’s been argued that images of very thin models do not cause anorexia, it has been proven to be one of the triggers that can lead to eating disorders. Montreal has especially been aware of the image it projects to its consumers in the fashion industry and Montreal Fashion Week fully supports the use of not-so thin models. However, from my observations when I’ve been to MFW, some of those girls seemed too thin in my opinion. But kudos to Simons for taking action.

Just 2 weeks after HBC has been acquired by Lord & Taylor, Richard Baker is moving swiftly to put some of the best retail players in the business to revamp the Hudson Bay Company. The newly appointed CEO of HBC, Bonnie Brooks (a Canadian native), was the President of the Hong Kong fashion group Lane Crawford Joyce Group since 2003.

If you’re not familiar with Lane Crawford, they are one of the most well-established department store chains in Hong Kong on par with our Canadian counterpart Holt Renfrew or Ogilvy. Under Brooks’ management, “the Lane Crawford group has tripled its business in the last five years and expanded its scope beyond Hong Kong and Macau into China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia,” according to WWD.com.

Baker says that there’s a gap between The Bay and Holt Renfrew, and he wants to fill that gap, but many Globe and Mail commentators were skeptical. Raising the usually affordable Bay prices might drive consumers away even if they were offering a better selection of brands. This is especially true with the failed project of Complexe Les Ailes in downtown Montreal where they were offering high end brands with considerably high price points for shoppers. Toronto-based Fairweather Group bought Complexes Les Ailes in 2005 and the upper levels have since been turned into office space.

Bringing in a luxury player and turning The Bay into a brand that sits between The Bay (the old one) and Holt Renfrew will prove to be tricky. Here’s a pricing breakdown between the two.

Holt Renfrew: Carries ready-to-wear and some bridge collections. $200-$5000 on average.
The Bay: Carries fast fashion, local, and some bridge collections. $20-$300 on average.

A premium price point would probably be somewhere between $75-$1000, if they indeed intend to offer better brands. However, I don’t know why this hasn’t been mentioned but what about Simons? They clearly have that premium price point – offering unique different brands, established an attractive shopping experience, while also offering a chance to pick higher quality brands. The demographic is however geared towards 18-25 year olds, while The Bay is probably targeting 25-35 yr olds. If anything, the new Bay (or Lord & Taylor) should perhaps take a cue from Simon’s and just make the experience a little more fun and luxurious without alienating their intended consumers.

Some might scoff at the idea of paying more for clothes, but these are people who don’t care for quality or don’t know what quality clothing is. What with the way stores are churning out new stock every month, it’s no wonder the general public demand cheap clothing. But I really think all this fast fashion lifestyle will turn around bite them in the butt. Soon people will tire of keeping up with trends (especially as we get older) and we would eventually want something durable and trendless. Fashion designers are already working towards seasonless collections, so “trends” per se are becoming obsolete. Therefore, stores will now have to make up for their seasonless collections and improve elsewhere such as price point, quality, branding, service and consumer experience.

So the appointment of Ms. Bonnie Brooks does inspire hope for The Bay brand, or really just the department store experience as a whole. We’re in serious need of quality stores in Montreal, and despite my initial reactions of The Bay possibly losing its brand name and appeal, at least they’re making an effort in changing it for the better.

Every so often at my blog, I get requests in writing about a new designer for sake of promotions. But as I’m still in the course of developing a certain point of view, I decided to put one of them to the test by asking some more serious questions. I get tired of run of the mill “So what’s the name of your brand? How did you become a designer?” yadda yadda, they can sum that up in a nice little biography for all I care.

After being happy to find out about my Ecco sandals’ provenance, I wanted to know if clothing brands would do the same in revealing where their clothes were made and what were their ethical standards.

Well, Toronto-based JUZD (pronounced “joost”) Bamboo is a particular case – it’s an unknown urban street wear designer that has been recently picked up by Holt Renfrew. I asked them a couple of serious questions and I was surprised by the thorough responses and learned a thing or two, it gave me some hope that there are brands out there who aren’t afraid of answering questions that are really relevant to the fashion industry. Jing Liu, Chief Designer of JUZD, happily answered my questions. Read on:

Q: Where are the clothes made (in Canada? China? India?)? And if you’re outsourcing overseas, is JUZD upkeeping labor law standards and why not keep jobs (and quality control) here in Canada?

It is made in China. China has the most advance textile technology and spends a lot on research and development. In addition the supply and qualityof bamboo is plentiful in China. It is made in a city that is rated as one of the ten best cities in China. However a lot of the assembly is here in Canada and  all the staff and contractors (excluding some designers) are here in Canada.

Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be a huge cyclone brewing in the fashion world, with a bad economy, it would look like fashion seems to be rearing its ugly head for what it has truly become. Fashion designers who love their craft are fighting to stay afloat, but how can they beat the likes of H&M when they have little to no financial backing and lack the resources to truly sell their brand?

Which puts into question as to where Montreal fashion is going business wise. Montreal Fashion Week is coming next month, I really wonder who the buyers are and where they come from. Last fall I attended Fashion Week on behalf of GLOSS, and was surprised that that there were only about a dozen notable designers showing for a total of a mere 3 days. Even our most coveted designer, Andy The-Anh, showcased his collection in Toronto’s L’Oreal Fashion Week in hopes to catch a larger audience. It would appear that the Montreal market hasn’t attracted enough buyers (international and local) to come to our fashion week despite a recent multimillion dollar investment from the Quebec Government.

Ralph Lauren Fall 2008. Simple and could definitely sell.

Muse by Christian Chenail Fall 2007. Could also sell, but are they selling?

 

I made a round yesterday to Ogilvy‘s and only saw Marie Saint Pierre’s name as the only local designer on the store’s 2nd floor. Holt Renfrew did have Rad Hourani’s collection, but where are the M Siamo’s, Philippe Dubuc’s and Andy The-Anh’s in these stores? More over, there are so many specialized boutiques that it’s hard to pinpoint which stores carry which lines, making shopping even harder especially for smaller brands. Not to mention that local designers have to compete with many European imports like Mango, Zara, H&M, and Mexx to big brand designer names like Chanel, Dior and Gucci in the high end sector. Let’s not forget that even our own proud canadian sports label Roots has been shoved aside to make way to American Eagle Outfitters downtown.

Having a good business model is essential to survive in the industry, so far it’s hard to think of one Canadian label in particular which has successfully incorporated themselves into international waters on a grand scale. But unlike Europeans and Americans, Montreal fashion designers currently aren’t attractive enough for financial honchos to invest into their brands. Though $82 million is a generous amount from the Quebec Government, it’s peanuts when the likes of other designers get the same amount for a SINGLE brand in a SINGLE year. It’s not enough to be a designer, it’s now essential to have a working business model. If Canada, even more so Montreal, wants to compete with the big guns they will have to find a way to boost their visibility on a grand scale and be aggressive. We’re being much too docile to newcomers, praising and coddling them through magazines isn’t enough, they need to be able to sell their clothes to buyers and establish some loyalty amongst their shoppers.

Image credits: Style.com, Muse Christian Chenail

For Americans retailers, with the weak economy and slugging sales, they’ve successfully devised a way to pry open those tightly held purses and wallets.

Sales. Make them big and make them early.

That did the trick.

Look what happened on Black Friday.

With online shopping growing in popularity, reports of a “Cyber Monday” is floating around. It’s the internet’s version of having their own little sales day for shoppers who didn’t want to confront the 2,500 or so shoppers lined up outside stores on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). This year’s Cyber Monday sales are expected to jump 3 times than that of last year’s online sales to an astonishing US$700million, according to comScore.

In Montreal, you can already check out that stores are jumping into the early holiday sales with Holt Renfrew marking down their designer goods at 40%-50% off, and Browns shoe store is marking theirs off at least at 30% off.

Online shoe retailer Zappos.com is an excellent alternative in finding stylish less expensive shoes, fast delivery and return policy. I can’t recommend this site enough! Shoppers who have already bought from Zappos can review the shoes they bought based on fit, comfort and size and can base recommendations like Amazon.com. You can find a large range of brand names like Guess, Lacoste and even the likes of Marc Jacobs, DSquared and Guiseppe Zanotti. For Canadian shoppers, you’ll have to go to Zappos.ca, but will hold less of a choice selection, though it is ever expanding.

Here are a couple more of online shopping suggestions:

Etsy – Handcrafted items such as scarves, purses, trinkets, dolls, sweaters, pots, and more. Attractive, friendly, easy to use.

Tigerdirect.ca – Futureshop and Best Buy are grossly overpriced. My boyfriend always shops here for computer parts and other electronics.

Cafepresse – Get your designs or buy designs, printed on a bunch of paraphernalia like mugs, calendars, tshirts, clocks and whatnot, it’s a great way to personalize your gifts for an affordable price.

Non-online gift ideas

Futureshop – Though grossly overpriced for most electronics, for some reason they always have way cheaper DVDs. Why is that? You can find some really good combos for under $20.

MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) – For practical winter clothing, you have to go here. You know winter clothing isn’t as dorky and frumpy as you might think. Especially in our climate, there is little room for compromise with mother nature!

Gift Cards – Frankly, you can’t go wrong with gift cards.