Four Square is the latest social media buzz that has numerous retailers jumping in on the action. This new location-based social network allows users to “check -in” their favorite places in the city and letting their friends know where they are. The main goal is to let people explore their cities, get tips from friends and strangers about cool places they’ve been to. What’s unique about Four Square is letting people earn badges, an icon that appears on a user’s profile upon completing certain tasks (i.e.: checking into one place 10 times will earn you a 10 trophy badge). Participating businesses can also created their own badge and let their loyal customers have some great deals or prizes if they check-in on a regular basis.

What I find great for fashion retailers is having another effective marketing tool to give a reason for customers to come back. By adding this fun gaming element and by rewarding loyal customers with prizes, it’s a near win-win situation. It’s like the frequent flyer programs, only much more personal. I frequently buy at Jacob for some practical pieces and if I could get a badge, I could be eligible for a discount after say, 10 check-ins (or purchases), I think that would definitely keep me as a customer.

A lot of major partners have already jumped on board including The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. The sole big fashion brand giant that has a venue page on Four Square is Louis Vuitton in June 2010. They’re currently in a partnership with London, as part of a promotion of their flagship store in London on Bond Street. As a reward, those who check in regularly at the Louis Vuitton stores can earn a special Louis Vuitton badge and be part of “upcoming surprises” the company will have for its users. Already possessing over 15,000 users on a relatively new social network, LV could be onto something.

By micro-managing these mini events that allow users to participate in their own cities, fashion brands can exercise and measure the power of their brands. According to Mashable, Jimmy Choo and Marc Jacobs have already released campaigns to lure users to follow them. Four randomly chosen lucky winners who regularly checked-in at Marc by Marc Jacob retail stores were given four tickets to this Marc Jacob show in New York last season. Jimmy Choo’s campaign involved participants to arrive at a specific store before a pair of trainers would leave and they would win a pair of shoes of their choice and size.

There are some privacy issues, especially for women who regularly check-in at different venues, where potential stalkers can track people online. So always use these new social networks with caution.

All in all, location-based social networking could prove to be an indispensable tool for fashion retailers worldwide.

The name Loro Piana might not be very familiar to those who don’t read up on luxury brands. They aren’t as flashy as Louis Vuitton and Hermes, yet still holding true to old-fashioned luxury retailing mantra – to be discreet. Such is the case when WSJ’s Binkley went on an investigative hunt where it led to discovering J. Crew’s efforts in establishing “better quality products” by stating in their labels that their cashmere comes directly from “a storied mill in Quarona,” the same mill belonging to Loro Piana. The Italian company had quietly allowed J. Crew to use its yarn for mass manufacturing, although of course they would never say a peep of it outloud, yet I wonder how they allowed WSJ to announce so publicly their secretive operations.

While the Loro Piana brand, whose sweaters cost over $1700, it’s clear where those extra dollars have gone when touching it compared to J. Crew’s $298 cashmere sweater made in China. Though it is the same wool, confections of either sweaters are completely different. If you’re going to be shipping something to China, you can imagine how many cashmere sweaters they will to have to create, and who has time to make any intricate assembly in a land where volume is what brings home the bacon?

Naturally, Binkley concludes that the Loro Piana sweater outdoes the J. Crew sweater by a long shot, giving J. Crew’s sweater a 2yr shelf-life. Though Mickey Drexler, either by luck or pure genius, has helped two American brands establish themselves on the mid-consumer market (the other being The Gap), I wonder if he’s just riding on the Michelle Obama bump, and trying to cash in on her exposure of her love to J. Crew. I mean $300 for a sweater that won’t last a while doesn’t seem like smart investment to me.

Image credits: Loro Piana, J. Crew

The internet is a source of infinite information made accessible only by those who have permitted themselves to make it accessible for free.

Newspapers and magazines have made their revenues from advertisers for over a century before the internet came along. Whether it used to be $0.10 or $0.50 for a printed newspaper, to a few dollars for a glossy magazine, media companies made their money through ads, this is a given.

When the internet came along, though it was neat to be able to share information in one common world wide web, advertising on the web was, right from the get-go, very cheap. Pennies were made based on impressions, clicks, and leads. Then, when content was reproduced on the web, the print media followed. However, the fatal mistake from print media was to reproduce their content for free.

If I were a business person, who made their fortune by offering a service for a price in person, and then offering the same service for free on the internet, of course my client base will grow on the internet. But my internet clients aren’t paying for my services, they’re getting it for free. And everybody, and I mean everybody, loves the word “free”. So it’s only logical that you would attract more people online than you would in person. By the end of if, I wouldn’t be making any money at all since my in-person clients will flock to me indirectly and get my services for free rather than in person.

Thus, my question to the big print companies such as the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the thousands of other newspapers…why did they make their content online free? It’s like shooting yourself in the foot. The Wall Street Journal was smart, they limit their free content and still rely on paid subscriptions to generate some revenue and it isn’t free falling into a black hole like other newspapers. Women’s Wear Daily is also able to stay alive with their subscription base model, while offering just a trickle of free content. It’s content is still linked to from numerous websites despite it being mostly off limits to casual browsers. Newspapers could have still been afloat if they would’ve offered their news for the same subscription price online as their print version. The only foreseeable problem with that is having their content reproduced by users – however, with hundreds of articles being printed each week, I doubt all of the content would be made public.

Fashion magazines however are not entirely at fault. Fashion brands have established their own sites and thus can propagate their ad campaigns from their home base without the need to pay for space in a physical world. The internet allows them to reach a much wider audience than their print (and costly) versions ever could.  Combine that with viral marketing from blogs, and cheap web space, there’s little need for fashion magazines except for the fashion gurus to cherry pick the cream of the crop of products. I suppose a temporary solution for fashion magazines is to also privatize their content online and have users pay to read their fashion experts’ opinions.

If print media companies would’ve started out with privatized paid subscriptions online, then I doubt there would’ve been such a global meltdown in the print world, perhaps saving thousands of jobs. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of sophisticated users who can pirate content, but quality content as the big medias were known for, wouldn’t have disintegrated so quickly if they did some planning and foreshadowing.

If print work does indeed die out in the next decade (and reduced to an art form), I expect online advertising prices to go up. With no ulterior source of income, I think coveted online fashion websites will have the opportunity to break out a new standard for online advertising. Of course, online fashion magazines will have to compete for attention with the very brands who are buying their ad space.

Quality discount clothing from a quality website owner. No loose pieces of lint, no dramatic catfights, no torn dresses, no overcrowded meltdowns, and no bitchy shoppers to deal with.The joys of shopping online. The only frustration I encounter regularly, even if I’m not purchasing, is how lightning fast online shoppers are in clicking those “Add To Cart” buttons.

Calvin Klein dress at 60% off, $646

Even during these massive discount times and that I don’t like discounts in general, I applaud Net-a-porter’s approach in offering only last Spring’s styles instead of this year’s. I’m also assuming last year’s fall collection will end up on the Outnet in a few months. They seem to be sticking to the traditional formula in offering the discount much later rather than only a few weeks online. How that will play to their advantage, however, will remain to be seen. Most physical stores on the retail playground are no longer adhering to traditional sale seasons due to the recession. I’m not quite sure if the same rules apply to online stores in general, such as online counter parts like Banana Republic seem to echo their prices as to what goes on the retail sales floor, so it’s difficult to say if original prices have a longer shelf-life online.

Outnet also offers sort of an Ideeli-like “flash sale” where deep discounts on certain items will only last for 72 hrs. The first of it’s kind is 8 days from now, a bundle of Spring dresses.

Granted, the Outnet is not that much different from other online discount retailers or the high end department stores who have sales of their own on their website. Here, they have to tread carefully. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Death to Discounts? The Designers Rebel, deep discounts are rifting the relationship between department stores and their designers. If retailers are too eager to put items on sale, designers may look for alternative solutions to keep discounts to a minimum and may look to open their own retail corner to control prices and keep some integrity over their products.

So, will The Outnet aggravate the already fragile relationship between consumer and designer? Only time will tell if it will survive this year’s price wars.

Image credit: The Outnet

The Wall Street Journal reports that ever since high end retailers like Neiman Marcus and Saks posted their losses in the last quarter, designers are said to have scaled back on the fantasy and zeroed in wearability to attract customers.

First of all, this seems contradictory of what happens on the sales floor. Given that I’ve cited a while back that runway shows are simply “for show,” the showroom collections differ greatly from runway and are actually designed to be worn yet not glamorous enough to be on the runway. Just take a look at Neiman, Saks, Bergdorf, Barneys and Net-a-porter. They all carry designer labels, yet only a few of them (as pointed out by Net-a-porter) are straight off the runway. The rest has never seen the light of day except by the eyes of retail buyers.

If the runway collections are, dare I say, drab this Fall, then what will buyers expect to see in the showroom? Even more drab clothing? I don’t understand this logic from designers. Buyers should know that runway is just for entertainment (to some end) and that the real business goes down in the showroom. If you can’t impress them on the runway, how can you even make them want to come to your booth at the showroom? Aren’t runway shows supposed to be fantastical anyway? One would think a great runway show will make you even more excited for the showroom just to see what the designer has in stock. Besides, aren’t buyers able to look past the glitzy parade and look for potentials in the clothes? Why would they be offended if there was a display of obvious luxury when they very well know that the real collections are nothing of the sort?

A good example of this is Alexander McQueen. Just take a look at his Spring 09  collection on Style.com, and then go to Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Yoox.com, and Net-a-porter.

What one would expect in the retail stores

Less likely to see this	More likely to see this

Clearly some elements of the runway shows up in the inventory, but you also see pieces that were not on the runway in greater numbers on these sites.

What really interests me is the effect on the clientèle itself. If a runway show is said to be say,  offensive,  in a sense that it displays obvious luxury, how exactly will that affect sales? Shoppers won’t really see these pieces in store, so what difference does it make?

I believe price slashing (other than the recession) was a key move that could set back retailers in attracting clients to paying full price in the future. If a dress sells for $1500 and then sold at $300 (80% off), then what’s that really saying to shoppers? It sends such a negative message (from a retailer’s point of view) that shoppers can save money if they just wait it out. But how is this helping retailers in selling at full price in the future?

Even if designer clothes have suddenly been made “wearable” (eventhough it has always been wearable on the retail floor), it’s really the economy that will determine shopping behavior. The middle market that was once attainable  for high end retailers to attract are no longer biting the bait. Inventory will shrink and refocus on wealthier clientèle, and perhaps a new breed of “accessible luxury” will be created at more affordable prices than before. The question is, are high end designers willing to go that low? Or will a new breed of middle market designers emerge to cater to the now frugal masses? Perhaps bridge collections will have to be priced cheaper than before, or given an extra oomph in order to sell.

Whatever the case, year end results will give us a really good idea of how well the fashion industry has coped with the recession.

Image credits: style.com, net-a-porter, l’oreal fashion week

The Wall Street Journal was rather cocky about the release of their new lifestyle magazine, WSJ. (with the period) last week, taking slight swipes at their competitions like T Magazine from The New York Times.

After some reflections and analyzing e-magazines, I’m starting to wonder if e-magazines really offer you a different web experience or are they really just spruced up versions of their printed counterparts? We’re now expecting more and more from fashion websites, we want them to be updated daily, we want RSS feeds, we want comment capabilities, forums, and tons of pictures and videos to look at.

Unfortunately, I don’t understand why big reputable newspaper companies such as the WSJ and NY Times cannot afford to give its magazines the same web usability as their newspapers. Granted, these magazines only publish monthly or quarterly, but I believe the extra online features should be added.

Here are some of things lacking from WSJ.

• No comment feature – Are we not allowed to have dialogue in the luxury world?
• Only one RSS Feed of a blog-ish type of daily update called “WSJ. Magazine Today”, of which a couple of the articles don’t show up in the feed, or a few appear in the feed but not on the same page of the site? Where are you pulling your posts WSJ.?
• Videos – Ok. I’m going to rip this apart. What is up with their videos?? I really like Roland Mouret and his interview “The Shape of Things To Come” is a good read. But the videos on this site are little more than decorative and have little to say. I usually like WSJ’s reporting videos on the newspaper’s site, even if they do lack pizzazz. These videos’ intros sound off to the beat of something coming off of MTV’s Cribs. On top of that, you can’t even share the video, not that they’d be worth it… Is this really luxury? I’m not even rich but I know crap when I see it.

I’ve revisited T Magazine’s site and also found a few gripes.

• No comment feature – except for their blog “In The Moment” which I’m starting to believe is really a blog post overload of anything fashion related. Hardly anybody comments.
• RSS only for “In The Moment”, so you’d have to scroll through a maze of articles on the site itself.
• Videos are non-linkable, non-adjustable, and a tad too small for my taste (make it YouTube size at least). I like their “Screen Test” series, and can find a few gems in “Exclusive Films”, but I would do away with “T Takes” of short films, they don’t belong on this site.

I’m split between what e-magazines today should represent. As a print publication, it’s obvious we’re only doing the reading and there’s no interaction whatsoever between the content and yourself. But as a web experience, especially seeing how interaction is now possible between the content and the user, I’ve come to expect this extra feature to be available for online publications (whether they have printed counterparts or not). I suppose magazines don’t want to lose their authority on fashion, and open the gates to dialogue will expose them to direct, unfiltered critique of their content. But so far I think being able to comment and share content has only heightened the interest in fashion and we could get some very insightful opinions from individuals you wouldn’t never hear about. Cathy Horyn’s “On The Runway” blog is a prime example of being able to voice her opinions, and still be respected and receive both favorable or unfavorable opinions from different users. This interaction shouldn’t be ignored and for the fashion industry, reknown as a tough skin industry, to shrivel up so easily to opinionated consumers is sort of an oxymoron.

Customization of course. I’m talking a little more than Carrie’s gold name plate frenzy back in the 90s (and I can attest that this was very popular in New Orleans back then), or having your name spelled out in beads on a string necklacle. In 2008, custom-made apparels are popping up in the accessories at affordable prices.

First there were shoes. Vans, Nike, and Converse are perhaps the most well-known companies who have prided themselves in offering their clientele a choice for self-expression. For the ladies, it was Steve Madden, who back in 2007, had the internet crowd a buzz with it’s new service of customizing over 45 different styles of shoes in your own colors and trimmings. Sadly, as I looked at the site recently – customize thy shoes no more. It appears that this gold mine service is no longer in service on Steve Madden’s website. Maybe they didn’t anticipate the high demand for customizable heels?

Second, there are hats. Specifically baseball caps. In Montreal’s underground shopping mall there’s a highly successful small booth (yes booth, they don’t even have store) which attracts teenage boys like moths to its fiery needle that stitches original graphics onto blank baseball caps. A computer is set up to program the stitching machine, as well as implement any new designs the makers come up with. You can flip through an album with hundreds of premade designs like a tattoo example album.

Thirdly, underwear. Stores like Bang-On adds a personal touch to your daily undies by transferring graphics onto them by hot press. You might remember this as high school homework for Generation Y people. They mostly use American Apparel’s er, apparels, as they’re a perfect canvas to work on. Think CafePress, but cooler and in a retro 80s store.

Finally, we have sunglasses. Perhaps geared towards the more affluent clientele, sunglasses are just another new addition to the mix. “With custom glasses, you can choose not only the frame but also other components, such as the bridge — the piece that rests on the upper part of the nose — and the temples — the arms that go along the sides of the head,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Therefore, creating your own specs at your own specifications, much like custom made clothing.

As shoppers are given more and more choices, it’s only obvious that to stand out from the crowd, we must express our individualistic style. By that, other than dressing differently, how about adding your own personal touch by having someone else do it for you without breaking the bank? As the rich turn to bespoke clothing, the mass consumer will turn to customizing entities. While the likelihood of getting your apparels Gucci-fied is no longer possible due to trademark laws, getting custom made clothing at an affordable price could be a new luxury market that remains untapped. Surely it would be difficult to maintain every single individual style, but given a proper organized system, the idea can surely fly. If we can deck out our iPods, we can surely deck out our closet.

Call it Tailoring 2.0.

Her reason? Writing for a magazine had too much pressure to be positive ALL the time. If a brand’s collection is perceived as bad for the season, they simply don’t write about it at all. Instead they would focus on the brands they deemed good. Being bred from a newsroom where there needs to be a heart to the story which includes fact checking, interviews, and unraveling the truth (whether good or bad) – there wasn’t any of that at Vogue.

You may find the occasional insightful article, the most notable I’ve read recently in Harper’s Bazaar’s September 2007 issue, “Everyone’s a fashion critic” by Pulitzer Prize acclaimed writer Robin Ghivan (The Washington Post‘s fashion editor). But as a whole, it’s hard to be negative in a magazine, I can vouch that as a writer for Gloss. It’s not that there’s anything to hide really, I enjoy doing interviews and all of them so far have been humble and super nice people. But after a while, it gets redundant. Newspapers have an edge that will allow you to express your opinions if given you can back up your statements.

Being a fashion editor at a newspapers does have its drawbacks. Opinions dished in newspapers can hurt brands, resulting in bans from certain fashion shows. Nobody has been spared, even the almighty Wall Street Journal, The NY Times, The International Herald Tribune, and Newsweek writers have been banned from attending shows, from Louis Vuitton to Armani, for their comments. Frankly though, kudos to these women who have the experience and most importantly – who have their eyes wide open. These women are not easily swayed by the glamour and lavish parties. Oh sure, they’ll attend the parties, but by no means would it bribe them in counting a collection as fabulous if it doesn’t live up to certain standards or capability. What makes them so qualified in critiquing you ask? Perhaps it’s because they don’t blindly follow the herd, that they don’t just gobble up what every designer has to offer. Not only that, they have experience under their belt and they haven’t abandoned their investigative journalistic skills.

Hilary Alexander, for The Daily Telegraph UK, is perhaps the exception to the investigative journalistic style for a newspaper. Although Hilary would rarely express her opinion on collections, she certainly makes up for it by concisely writing show reviews with the pen of a novelist. Her choice of words build and create fantastical atmosphere that one can only dream of how beautiful these runway shows are in real life. She’s incredibly talented on this end, and so I forgive her for lacking an opinion.

With my experience in fashion magazine writing, I feel that here you would have to stretch your creative writing skills by indulging the reader into the fantasy that fashion is portraying. That, in some respect, requires quite a good deal of skills in order to achieve this mystical world for the reader. How do you convince your readers that the latest designer you’re presenting is hot stuff and why? What makes them special? I’ve been struggling with this since I’ve started, but learned a great deal along the way. I do believe at the end of the day that my heart belongs in having an opinion on fashion and digging deeper to unravel the truth and mystery behind the fashion facade.

Image credit: Patrick McMullan for Harper’s Bazaar

When it comes to menswear, there is little to help a man out in picking the best quality suit at the best price. So the Wall Street Journal took it upon themselves to seek out advice from known experts in menswear. This article brings to light how one company has shifted productions to China, believing that the country is now well-equipped and trained to create higher end suits. However China’s quality control reputation hasn’t been quite stellar since last year after a number of recalls from food to toys. So the WSJ put 4 suits to the test and asked a small panel of experts to determine which suit is made in China, and what details a man should look for in a good high quality suit.

The article highlights a good point about the importance of the finishing of a garment, it would appear since my post about the finishing at Teenflo does make a difference to determine high quality. Of course a $1,300 suit jacket versus a $400 suit jacket will surely yield a huge discrepancy in quality which lies in the details. And according to the WSJ, it looks like not even a $998 jacket made in Italy nor does the priciest, at $1495, equate the best of the best of suits! At that price range, it would be wise to try on a few brands before making such a hefty purchase.

Image credits: The Wall Street Journal

While competitors like Forever 21 stock up with new duds within 6 week intervals, Zara packs in new styles twice a week. Collections are kept small to minimize losses on flops and capitalize on exclusivity when they sell out. You can say that they’ve created the fast fashion model and turned it into a multi-million dollar business and lots of companies are catching up quick.

Just another growing problem in fashion globalization. Soon you’ll be able to get new fashion every single day. I give it about 5-10 years before fast fashion goes out of hand.

Today is Hi-Speed.

And tomorrow: Ludicrous Speed!