How to Start a Fashion Line with Yentunde Schuhmann, Leigh Rawdon, Mercedes Gonzalez, Bertrand Pellegrin and Emily Meyer
If you have a flair for design and a desire to break into the industry - even create your own line - our experts will teach you how to get your fashions into stores, on customers and in the media!
Our Expert Fashion Insiders will give you all the info you need to start your own fashion line and get it into the department stores and boutiques. They'll cover:
- What buyers look for and how to get useful feedback from them
- Pricing and marketing
- Selling your wares - how to approach stores, tradeshows and the Net
- How to develop your own unique fashion identity
- How to make your line stand out
- Getting good P.R. and magazine coverage
- Where to find inspiration
- How to turn your passion into a viable business
- Overcoming obstacles
- The most common mistakes young designers make - and how to avoid them
- And more.
Come learn from these true veteran fashion pro's how you can take your idea and turn it into a flourishing line:
Yetunde SchuhmannYetunde Schuhmann currently provides sustainable business consulting to fashion businesses and is the acting president of the Innovative Fashion Council (IFCSF). With the active support of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Schuhmann founded IFCSF as a non-profit trade council devoted to the development of a sustainable fashion industry. Together with the Mayor's office and a coalition of fashion designers, retailers, corporate industrialists, and other professionals, Ms. Schuhmann was quickly able to build IFCSF into a resource center that has already received acclaim for centralizing sustainable efforts in so-called "eco-fashion."
Leigh RawdonLeigh Rawdon is the CEO and Co-founder of Tea Company. Leigh's dad taught her to spell entrepreneur when she was in second grade. She was always recruiting her neighborhood friends for door-to-door bake sales or an afternoon of playing shopkeeper. In high school, she had her first business license to sell balloons for parties. After studying English at Davidson College, she returned to the business world but quickly realized she couldn't work for someone else. While attending Harvard Business School, she continued to search for the big idea. It didn't arrive until she had moved to San Francisco to work in Silicon Valley. Her friend Emily confided in Leigh about her dream for Tea and Leigh knew that was it-Tea was the big idea.
Mercedes Gonzalez - ModeratorMercedes R. Gonzalez has been a buyer in the garment industry since 1988. Her passion for the industry started when she was 14 years old and went to work every summer for her uncle who owned and operated a manufacturing company in the heart of the garment district in New York. After graduating from New York University where she earned her degree in economics, she went back to work full time with her uncle. She changed the operation of the company by moving production overseas, streamlining the company and insuring a stronger bottom line. Soon after Mercedes decided to try buying and was hired by one of the largest buying offices at the time, Frederick Atkins. She had participation in private label for such stores as Dillard's and Harvey Nickels of England. In the last 20 years Mercedes has worked with some of the most important designers in the industry and has helped to open or restructure hundreds of stores in the United States and overseas, including the inaugural Sears store in Panama.
Regularly featured in industry publications, such as Women's Wear Daily, Mercedes also teaches workshops on successful retailing at industry trade shows such as MAGIC and WSA and at regional markets in Atlanta, California and Dallas. She is invited around the world from Chile to China to speak to retailers and manufacturers on entering the US market.
Bertrand PellegrinBertrand Pellegrin is Director of BP Consulting Ltd., a boutique consulting firm specializing in retail development, strategic positioning, and creative direction for global projects in brand design and business development. Mr. Pellegrin's expertise includes strategic customer insight and creative consulting in fashion brand development, identity, and market expression. His list of clients includes major luxury department stores, boutique retailers, consumer products, and commercial development projects.
Mr. Pellegrin's extensive experience includes positions as the Asia-Pacific Director of Marketing for Lane Crawford (Hong Kong) Ltd., Asia's premier luxury department store.He has also provided his expertise as a brand development consultant for Gucci, Louis Vuitton (LVMH), and Lotte Shopping Group in Korea, for whom he developed a 32-story luxury concept store in Seoul.
His new book, Branding the Man: Why Men are the Next Frontier in Fashion Retail (Random House/Allworth Press, 2009) examines the evolution of the American consumer and offers a strategic branding approach to men's retailing.
Emily Meyer Emily Meyer's is Creative Director and Co-Founder of Tea Company. Emily's inspiration began at her childhood home in Texas, where the live oak trees created a dreamworld that spread as far as the eye could see. Growing up, her mother introduced Emily and her sister to the languages, arts and cultures around the world. To follow her love of fashion, Emily left Texas to study at Parsons School of Design in New York. After spending a year living in Paris, she returned to New York to design menswear for top designers Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis and Alexander Julian. Lured to San Francisco by love, she spent days and nights designing childrens wear at Gymboree and Esprit. Eventually she couldn't resist her powerful vision of globally influenced and inspired clothing for children-and so began Tea.
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