When Richard Baker, CEO of NRDC, bought The Hudson's Bay Company for a cool $8 billion last month, he announced his plans to turn Canada’s oldest retailer into an industry leader, using a similar strategy to that of US retailer Lord & Taylor. Lord & Taylor, which happens to be America’s oldest department store, was also recently acquired by NRDC. So, with two of the oldest department store chains on the continent in his portfolio, what are Baker’s grand plans?
In Canada, Baker believes that there is a gap between mass-market The Bay and luxe player Holt Renfrew. Thus, he plans to open 10 to 15 Lord & Taylor stores within existing Bay flagship stores or within HBC real estates. According to a source at HBC, large city centre The Bay flagships of 600,000 sq. ft. and up will be split into two entities, containing both The Bay and Lord & Taylor across, say, 2 floors each. NRDC will also introduce more prestigious brands to The Bay’s lineup, including those of NRDC-owned Creative Design Studios, Peter Som’s parent company.
I am filing this post from “Cottage Country”, north of Toronto, very far from the centre of the fashion world. Nontheless, when I first arrived in Toronto about a week ago, I asked local fashionistas the same questions I ask everywhere in an effort to seek out local stories which are still relevant to the international readership of the Business of Fashion. There's always an interesting story to tell. Who should I try to meet, where should I go to see designs by the top local designers, and which fashion brands and retail chains are using innovative ways to build their businesses?
Almost without exception, these questions were met with a slight shrugging of the shoulders and a resignation that the local scene is nothing to write home about. “There’s not a lot going on,” I was told over and over again. “Canadian designers lack the confidence to push forward their own ideas, choosing instead to be ‘inspired’ by major international designers.”
I had almost resigned myself to the fact that there was nothing to write about, when I started recalling the names of supermodels, young and old, who have come from Canada. Irina Lazareanu grew up in the Montréal suburb of St-Hubert and was
launched to fame by her friend Kate Moss. Coco Rocha of Richmond, British Columbia used her Celtic dance skills spark her fashion moment. Jessica
Stam from Kincardine near Lake Huron, 2 hours from Toronto, is the namesake of Marc Jacobs' ever popular Stam bag. And of course, 90's supermodels
like Linda Evangelista of Toronto and Yasmeen Ghauri of Montréal were
amongst the first Canadian models to hit the big time.
So, maybe Canada isn’t a
land that develops world-class designers, but something about the place
does seem to nurture top models. Could Canada be giving traditional model hunting grounds like Brazil and Eastern Europe a run for the money?
You be the judge. Here's a look at the top 5 international models hailing from Canada.
To many die-hard fashionistas, Los Angeles has always been considered the less sophisticated, dressed-down, in your face, suburban, over-celebrity conscious little sister to New York, which has consistently retained its place amongst the world's fashion capitals. However, our visit to L.A. has revealed an interesting mix of local designers and boutiques combined with the glossy global brands along Rodeo Drive. Driven by its native contemporary brands, L.A. is experiencing a fashion renaissance.
Yesterday, I cruised around some upcoming fashion districts here with Jamil Juma, of Juma, which he designs with his sister Alia. Juma's collections (one fashion forward RTW, one activewear) are carried at more than 30 boutiques around North America, including Fred Segal in L.A. and Caravan in NY. Both Jamil and I were keen to get a feel for what is going on here, especially in the hot contemporary segment where his brand is positioned.
Unlike the United States, Europe and the Middle East, the Canadian retail luxury landscape is dominated by one major player, Holt Renfrew, which was founded in 1837 in Quebec City.
In 1986, the venerable retail chain was acquired by Galen Weston, who also owns Selfridges in London and Brown Thomas in Ireland. Since then, Holts has gone on to become the destination for luxury
shoppers in Canada with 9 locations in all major cities, an estimated $500m in revenues, and still virtually no
competition to speak of in the domestic luxury department store market.
In Canada, many young aspiring fashionistas cut their teeth on Fashion Television (or FT), hosted by Jeanne Beker. I accidentally happened upon the site recently and came across a veritable treasure trove of video content that is relevant to some of the topics recently debated and discussed on The Business of Fashion:
Fashion blogging Any regular readers of this blog know that I have been a big fan of the Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, since I first came across his site almost two years ago. His was the first blog of any sort to really catch my attention because there was something really powerful about seeing clothes that are styled by real people on the street. It brings the clothes to life in a way that high-fashion editorial sometimes cannot. FT does a great video profile of Scott that allows you to see how The Sartorialist came to be, explains how Scott thinks about his work and reveals that The Sartorialist is now receiving over 1.3 million page views per month. [You can see my own Sartorialist moment here]
The Sartorialist blog also opened my eyes to the potential of what the democracy of blogging could do for a fashion business, particularly emerging businesses with limited profiles and advertising budgets. What if, for example, you could mouse over a sweater you like in one of Scott's photos and could discover who designed the sweater and where you could buy it online through phototagging (just like you can tag people in your photos on Facebook.com)? Its Fashion 2.0 folks and its only going to get more interesting.
There is a lot more discussion of the fashion blogosphere is in this video overview narrated by Jeanne Beker, highlighting the pros and cons of the fashion blogging phenomenon, which some say has resulted in a reported 2 million fashion blogs. Jeanne speaks to some of the world's leading fashion critics (Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, Kate Betts from Time magazine, and Colin McDowell from the Sunday Times) to get their views on what blogging has done for them. She also speakss to the (love-him-or-hate-him) blogstar Perez Hilton.
Tom Ford's new store on Madison Avenue FT also gives us a peek into the much-discussed Madison Avenue flagship recently opened by Tom Ford, and heavily criticised by some observers for being too exclusive and too expensive. Tom Ford gives Jeanne a personal tour of the store which provides some of Tom's own thinking on what he was trying to accomplish with the store. Jeanne does go through the price points in the store, which are truly astronomical, including personalised underwear for $75.
Mentoring emerging designers When emerging designers talk to me about setting up their own businesses, I often encourage them to try to get some time working in the studio of an established design house first. This video outlines the mentorship of young proteges including Yves Saint Laurent (mentored by Christian Dior) to Francisco Costa (mentored by Calvin Klein) to Narcisco Rodriguez (mentored by Donna Karan). You can see how some of the industry's biggest names of today started their careers as apprentices to some of the biggest names from yesteryear.
Yes, this blog is a commentary on the Business of Fashion. But, it is also a blog, more generally, on how you can take artistic and creative ideas and channel them in a way that is economically sustainable (and commercially lucrative) over the long term; how you can make the worlds of creativity and commerce co-exisit and feed off of each other harmoniously, without worrying about "selling out." Yes there is always a tension between the creatives and the corporates, but if the right balance is struck, the results can be magical.
For example, when John Galliano takes his fantastical ideas from Haute Couture origami and oriental dreams and declines them for his RTW show in a way that is sumptuous, beautiful and (just slightly) more accessible to a larger audience, he understands the realitities of the business, but does not compromise his creative energy for this. He just finds a way for them to co-exist. In this way, the high costs of designing and showing a couture collection are justified not only by the brand-building and awareness of the Dior brand that comes from these spectacles, but also because his couture collection acts as a creative playground from where he can take the most extreme creative ideas and then use the same raw material to adapt them for RTW, fragrance and accessories which are huge money makers.
Today, I was reading an article from the New York Times on one of my favourite Indie bands, The Arcade Fire whose balance of creative and business sense, one could argue, is equally astute as Galliano's. I first came to hear of the band through word of mouth a few years ago from friends in Montreal and New York. Intrigued, I showed up outside the venue for Arcade Fire's intimate sold-out European debut concert in a tiny venue at King's College in central London, without a ticket in hand. With a bit of patience and some luck, I managed to snag a ticket from someone who had an extra one to sell and walked into this concert, knowing almost nothing about the band. There was a palpable sense of expectation in the air. The room was filled with important European music industry execs who wanted to see what all of the trans-Atlantic fuss was all about, hard-core fans who had been following the band's progress on blogs and music media like NME and pitchforkmedia.com, and many former Montrealers like me who wanted to share in the excitement of a homegrown Montreal talent creating waves in the global music industry. I walked away that night knowing I had witnessed a magical creative moment.
Since then, The Arcade Fire have gone on to play sell-out shows all over the world, their debut album Funeral has sold 750,000 copies, and they now count Bono and David Bowie among their biggest fans. Not bad for a bunch of former McGill University students who were signed up to an independent record label. Expectations have therefore been even higher for their second album Neon Bible. which comes out on March 6th.
The Times article today struck a chord (really, I swear, no pun intended) with me as it was clear from the article that it is not only their creative talent and vision that has propelled them to success. It is also their common sense approach to business, aptitude for marketing and PR (while still remaining somewhat mysterious), and the strong collaborative and consensus driven leadership style of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.
First, the common sense. This isn't a band that went on alcohol-binge-benders bashing up hotel rooms and burning through cash like the paper it is. This is a band that paid for the recording of its own albums, bought a studio-cum-Church to record its second album, retained rights to its master recroding and brand, and then licensed it to music companies Merge and Universal. Furthermore, they are constantly pushing the creative envelope (another similarity to Galliano) but do so in way that is still reasonable (which Galliano has learned though the year). For example, they shipped themselves off to Budapest to work with a 60 piece orchestra there because it was more financially realistic to do so than doing the same in North America. In short, they have kept control of their affairs, their cash, and themselves so that they can shape their creative output in a way that is consistent with their values and insipiration, but that also allows them to reap financial rewards. To be clear, these are not ascetic idealist types who think that commercial success somehow invalidates the value of their creative success. They have found a way to be comfortable with both.
When it comes to marketing, these guys have combined the use of edgy new media and traditional mainstream media platforms to create a huge profile and awareness of their music and brand. First, they seize the zeitgeist of their target audience and deliver marketing messages that resonate because they are authentic and true to what Arcade Fire stands for. As the NYT article points out, instead of a 'professional' marketing strategy for their new album they produced instead an iMovie for distribution on YouTube, complete with a toll-free 1-800 hotline number for fans to call in to hear material from the new album. What the article fails to mention is that their professional marketing strategy has also been built on venerable media outlets like TIME Magazine and the New York Times reporting on the band's curious modus operandi and cult following as a cultural interest piece, while at the same time giving them another important audience to reach: the audience who will pay for their music because it is perceived as cool and hip by those in the know. Broad media coverage like this is priceless, but the band manages to do it without losing their creative edge. To top it all off, their penchant for theatrics is not just a little similar to Galliano's use of spectacle and fantasy in his runway shows. Both Galliano and the Arcade Fire understand that conjuring up and delivering dreams that people want to be part of is always the making of great marketing.
Finally, they also seem to have the management of their ever-growing cast of musicians and complex business affairs under control. And, while its seems that the band is driven by consensus and shared values of what feels right and consistent with what Arcade Fire is about, there is also clear leadership in place in the form of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. Butler strikes me as a visionary leader who knows where he wants to take things and inspires others to come along with him. Regine pushes people to test the limits of their creative energy and this brings the most out of her bandmates. Even if the results arent always spectacular, she encourages risk-taking. At a recent London show that didnt go off as they wanted, she improvised and brought the audience outside the concert venue and fired up one of their hits from the first album. Leadership in innovation, clarity and vision is something this band has in spades.
And so, I think Arcade Fire is a great case study for any young designers who want to be true to their creative selves while still recognise the need for commercial success. You can check out a video of their impromptu performance in London's Porchester Hall lobby below to witness the almost religous fervour that captivates the audience as they launch into one of Arcade Fire's best songs from the first album. If you look carefully you can see Coldplay's Chris Martin amongst the Arcade Fire faithful.
I received this invitation from a friend from McGill, Jamil Juma, who with his sister Alia, has set up a budding young fashion business in Toronto. The Juma line is a contemporary women's wear collection carried in the US, Canada and Japan.
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