The Business of Fashion-Lulu's thinking

Last Friday, my fabulous CIDA crew attended the evening event called the Business of Fashion: Inspiration, information and networking, held by Fashion Capital (one of the UK's leading fashion portal). Unlike CIDA, Fashion Capital (FC) aims to emphasise a one-stop online support resource for all sectors of the clothing and fashion industry. According to the shape of FC logo, the online company  hopes to hang all sorts of fashion contents all together included relevant news,trends, online learning, community, multimedia gallery and online Boutique. According to Jenny Holloway's positive speech during the evening event, she particularly pointed out that fashion is a fun and vibrant business. From my perspective, fashion designers always feel uncomfortable when the fashion industry becomes more and more commercial due to the high demands in the market. They really need a professional supporting agency which could fully understand their contradictory demands such how to put creativity into their fashion business without being commercial. Meanwhile, the professional supporting agency could offer them high quality and specific advices.

In terms of the event venue, City Business Library is one of the leading public libraries offering business information and professional events. No doubt, it is an ideal place for  fashion business networking. Overall, apart from CIDA, there are nine supporting organisations participated in the event (Business Launchpad, Companies House, Craft Central, and etc). Every exhibitor got plenty of chances to promote themselves to attendees, and meet up with other like-minded organisations. Apart from the exhibitors, the hundreds of attendees can seek for professional advices and mingle around with other interesting people. As a part of the CIDA crew, my main task is to describe how wonderful CIDA is and explain how it works such as the membership scheme and its massive benefits. Generally, I was bit excited about promoting CIDA to someone that is unfamiliar to me. At the beginning, I did not connect my tongue and my mind. My potential clients felt confused about my short briefing. After several tough rounds, I could described CIDA and its working procedure in a detailed way. In fact, I met a really "interesting" 35 year-old woman (paying attention to my ironical tongue). Basically, she wanted to set up an enterprise about vintage jewellery and asked our help. I told her CIDA was the good place that helps you to set up your own creative business. She believed it and asked me more details. During the conversation, she kept announcing her unique and sharp taste. She showed me all her vintage jewelleries and accessories. When I got back to my place, I start to think that to some extent, people may feel uncomfortable and impatient about her. To be honest, she is so good at promoting herself. At least, she is one of the few attendees I remembered. That could explains being passionate and unique are really essential in the context of the creative sectors. I need to figure out my own personal branding right now.

Finally, speaking of networking, in the UK, both men and women are welcome to participate in events and forums which specialised in networking. However, in China, 'Guanxi'(social networking) is normally attended by gentlemen. One of the chief reasons that female creative labours get lack of promotion is due to the informal social networking. They always feels like to be excluded by this gentlemen's club. Well, here you go, an other post- feminist thinking pop in my mind now.

Designer’s Fiesta 4- Lulu’s experience

On the 27th of September 2013, Rebecca sent me to spend a marvellous half-day learning new skills and understanding recent trend in the UK’s creative field at The Designer’s Fiesta-‘a celebration of design and digital’. The event is hold by UK’s leading Adobe Authorised Training Centre- Academy Class.

Venue:

The holding place is very easy to approach; only 7 minutes walk from Blackfriars station. The venue called 15 Hatfields is quite versatile which is a professional place for conferencing and events. A modern reception area located next to the entrance which leads to 4 main conferences rooms, which could be seat no more than 80 individuals. It also gets a large conference room downstairs which could contain around 150 people. Each conference room served with HD video conferencing and web casting facilities, which is perfect for workshops and presentation.

My first time to promote CIDA:

I arrived at the registration desk around 14:10. Sara, one of the event organizers told me that a young digital designer called Laura hoped to find out what CIDA about, and how it works. After a short conversation with her, I found out she hoped to build up a small design enterprise in London. CIDA, one of Designer’s Fiesta partners is exact the ideal agency, which specialised in supporting and representing entry-level creative and artists. Thus, I left her the general office tel. She gave me her business card for exchange. At the end of the conversation, I started to promote our upcoming event creative XPO.

Session Details:

Generally, the Designer’s Fiesta was targeted at digital designers and developers to share their tricks and tips related to digital design works. To be honest, I am not quite a digital person. Surprisingly, after attending the event I started to realize how important the digital media and various creative tools are. I was completely blown away by those techniques and tips introduced by those digital design masters especially Mark Gatter’s presentation on ‘Photoshop masks in all their glory’. Besides, there were loads of creative experts and scholars introducing the current trend in CCI field. Each presentation runs for an hour long. Particularly, I do enjoy Marc Campman’s speech on the importance of social media for creatives. During the presentation, he highly recommended that every CCI workers should set up their own website, which is one of the strategies to set up your personal branding. Then you need to regularly socialise your portfolio (twitter, Google plus, LinkedIn) in order to find new customers and peers. According to the official statistics, in 2013, there are over 50% of population are under 30 years old. Those young people are the most active group among social media users. In such a digital era, the status of information is equal to food. Also for the individual company, social media can be a powerful business-generating tool, or a total waste of time. If performed correctly, social media marketing can measurably increase leads and sales. Overall, the event was well worth going to especially for those digital designers and developers. They had some very knowlegeable speakers and provide a great platform for networking with like-minded peers. At the end of the event, the event holders threw a big drinking party for social networking again.