I have just returned from the London Fashion Week (2009) and have heard some stories of how the recession is affecting the industry, severely and in some cases designers are facing bankruptcy. There may be many factors which have brought about that dire prospect for the designer Christian Lacroix, and I am not qualified to discuss his personal circumstances.
Perhaps, a thought or two about our encounters with seasoned and new up and coming designers may help improve business for all. Designers we met came from a broad spectrum of new and seasoned designers. Thankfully we encountered established designers who understand the flexibility required by new start up businesses and their needs during tight cash flow times require and made a positive commitment by lowering initial orders for us to purchase their stock. It may only be an £500 to £900 pound order for them, but as our business grows we know who we will shop with again.
Some designers where less flexible to new retail buyers, they are entrenched with their sales structure to new businesses, only allowing orders in the thousands of pounds bracket and they wouldn’t accept lower orders, surely isn’t this a short sighted position to adopt and detrimental to there long term survival.
That said our business is not operating on a fear factor that you mention in the article above; but on the factor that customers will always be looking for something different. And by providing an alternate method of achieving their goals, I am sure it will lead to increased interest from the consumer and thus generate increased sales. The designers, naturally, will also benefit from our success; therefore our business is searching for new up and coming artists that we aim to promote along side the established and seasoned designers.
Selfishly, I cannot conclude this comment without self promoting our business, Voulue (French for “Wanted”) we hire designer handbags to our customers and if they fall in love with them they have the option to buy. We discussed our business structure with the designers at the LFW and the designers agreed it was a very good idea.
If you are a new great designer and have a collection of exceptionally good quality handbags, Voulue would like to here from you, together the future may be brighter. Send images or look books to roger@voulue.com or visit our website to see what we are doing www.voulue.com or more information about us can be found on our blog www.voulue.com/blog
