From Catwalk to High Street - The Fashion Cycle

With London Fashion Week having ended High Street pattern designers will be scurrying around like mad to get the latest trends and styles interpreted for their next season collections. Designs will be sketched up and out to their manufacturers within days, and the collections ready for the next season.

 

Primark famously boasted that "Once a style is identified it can take as little as 6 weeks to reach stores" and the likes of Zara, having their own manufacturing and distribution, can have catwalk inspired items in store within 2 weeks. Technology is speeding up that process, with designers often streaming their shows live and of course the LFW website has videos of all the shows uploaded pretty quickly. Social Media has opened up communication across the globe and sees outfits tweeted and talked about within minutes. Retailers can see easily what's trending and being talked about, and pick up on what's going to be hot for next season.

 

We don't realise just how much our clothing and style is influenced by the catwalk shows. Looking at some designs you'd wonder how on earth anyone would wear some of the more outlandish collections, but those ideas filter down to more wearable fashion in the High Street stores...style and colour trends in our shops are all inspired by the designs on display at London, New York, Paris and Milan.

 

 

 

 

You won't find High Street retailers attending the fashion shows, strictly the reserve of the media, photographers, high end boutique or niche stores and of course the who's on the 'Frow'  much talked about celebrities. However some High Street brands are making it on to the Catwalk more recently, such as Topshop and Victoria's Secret. Topshop have collaborated with many top designers and celebrity collections have helped to bridge that chasm between high end designer fashion and High Street.

 

Earlier this year a report commissioned by the British Fashion Council on the "Value of Fashion" was presented to the House of Commons, which was the first comprehensive report of its kind, looking at everything from the top fashion houses to low priced retail chains, taking into account manufacturing, wholesale, retail, media and marketing businesses across the fashion sector. Fashion is the 15th largest industry in the UK directly employing 816,000 people, which then makes it the second biggest employer by sector.

 

The report concluded that the fashion industry is now worth £21 billion a year to the UK economy, with LFW being a big part of that.  It could be worth as much as £37 billion in its wider context when tourism and industry related businesses are taken into account.

 

So LFW is over for some but for the industry it's just kick started a hive of activity as retailers rush to get their versions of what's coming off the catwalks into store.

 

Some of the highlights and designs that inspire what we will be seeing in-store soon.

London Fashion Week Kicks Off Today!

It's London Fashion Week again! Starting today, no sooner have the Paralympics finished and all the Olympics displays are taken down and we're into LFW already! This is the busiest quarter of the year for retailers and LFW really does get us all in the mood for shopping!

So what do we have to look forward to  style wise, filtering down to designers in-store on the High Street for Spring / Summer 2013? It's the catwalks at London Fashion Week that typically inspire ranges across chains of cheaper High Street shops and supermarkets. The fashion we wear up and down the nation stems from the designs being marched up and down catwalks this week.

With Topshop leading the way High Street brands are making their mark on Fashion Week and for the first time this year Topshop are offering a purchase service from the show itself.

Here's a nice little preview from LFWTV on what we have to look forward to over the next five days in this trailer film created by the winner of the Fash/On Film Mentoring Scheme. A new nationwide search for emerging film-making talent launched in June,  where one talented young person is selected to collaborate with the fashion industry to showcase up and coming designers, to be shown  in full at LFW, sponsored by River Island:

A short film celebrating London Fashion Week performed by Spellbound Gymnast Troupe to showcase the best of British catwalk designs SS13 filmed in time lapse in the fountains at Somerset House, by the Guardian:

The show started with Antoni & Alison, complete with marching brass band, reinforcing the year of the British! Films of all catwalk collections can be seen on LFWTV:

Fyodor Golan explain the inspiration for their catwalk collection and an interview with Hilary Alexander, just a couple of highlights from the day, by 55TV:

Watch this space for more on London Fashion Week!

Halloween - Big Business in the UK

Our warehouse is full of spooky looking displays and POS items being picked and packed for roll outs to major supermarket chains across the UK. Ghosts and skeletons, bats and ghouls, mummies and spiders...it's all wonderfully fun and our favourite time of year receiving in these items, and sorting through them ready for installation!

Halloween, although an old festival is gaining popularity year on year as influences from across the pond make this a bigger celebration than it was when I was a child, back then it was penny for the guy and bonfire night that was the main Autumn celebration. Children did go trick or treating and have dress up parties but it's a world away from apple bobbing and homemade costumes...there just wasn't the amount of merchandise availabe then.

 

Now supermarkets dedicate their whole seasonal aisle to Halloween at this time of year and decorate with floor graphics, hanging nets and signs to display ghoulish items that are for sale on the shelves. It does seem to be quite supermarket-centric, unlike Christmas and Easter, as people spend less on Halloween items, looking for cheap sweet and food items, costumes and decorations.

 

Halloween was celebrated more in America and I think Walmart owned Asda have had a big influence on bringing big time promotion of Halloween to the UK, partnering up with brand manufacturers to offer exclusive Halloween themed confectionary items.

 

Halloween is now the third largest selling opportunity after Christmas and Easter so it's understandable that supermarkets spend so much on display items to maximise on sales - just try getting through the supermarket with your children when there's a huge fun and excitingly decorated aisle tempting them in! Reportedly worth more than £300 million to UK retailers in 2011, and with a growth forecast of 12.5% predicted this year by retail analysts it will be worth more like £315 million! A decade ago consumers only spent £12 million on Halloween so you can see why supermarkets and major retailers take the display and promotion of Halloween products seriously.

 

 

 

As we do every year we look forward to the Halloween installations, it's a fun time of year in the warehouse and for the teams out on the road making up seasonal aisles up and down the country delight customers and their children with their spooky displays!

 

Look out for our next blog with photo's of the 2012 displays once they're installed!

Everything Everywhere Get 4G - Mobile Market Impact

Everything Everywhere Group, who own the T-Mobile and Orange networks, have got the go ahead from Ofcom to operate 4G (fourth generation) mobile services on their existing bandwidth today. This was in the pipeline for early next year but Everything Everywhere have been allowed to operate earlier than expected.

Vodafone and O2 have expressed their views on Ofcoms decision today, voicing their disappointment, as it will clearly hold back their businesses with a major rival having a head start in the 4G marketplace. The other providers will be able to bid for 4G broadband by early 2013 as originally planned. Ofcom defended its decision by stating that this will benefit consumers and to hold back an operator that is ready to offer this service would be detrimental to the consumer. They had previously said that they wanted to see at least four credible network operators bidding in 2013 to promote competition in the marketplace.

Ruck Retail Solutions recently audited the entire Orange estate - providing valuable information for the design and installation of point of sale and promotional materials, and no doubt there will be heavy promotion of the super fast 4G broadband service now it has the early go ahead. See the case study here.

Retailers and the Olympics...Story So Far

What a fantastic start to the Olympics Team GB have had! Number 3 in the world for medals received so far and given the populations of America and China, ahead of us in the medal stakes, it makes the amount of excellent athletes our little Island is producing even more impressive. There's no doubt the whole country is proud to be British right now and proud of the Olympics but what has it done for British retailers? Is it what retailers had expected so far?

With complaints from London retailers and tourist attractions that visitor numbers are down and the city was quieter than usual during the week, the expected surge in retail sales has been a bit of a let down. However the West End retailers and Westfields reported an increase in sales over the weekend.

There's no doubt we are all glued to the TV - much of it has been blamed on non Olympic tourists avoiding visiting whilst the Olympics is on and locals staying clear of the city expecting congestion, but as we've seen last week it seems to have been quite the opposite with London roads clearer than they've been for a long time.

It's not just London, the Guardian reported this weekend that retail footfall outside of London is also slow on the High Streets, falling by 9%. However where shopping centres have installed large screens to attract shoppers, they are seeing an increase of visitors, up by 6% -11%, helped in turn by the extended Sunday shopping hours.

Lets see what happens this week - as we go for more medals the more people are engrossed in watching the Olympics, so perhaps it will be a another quiet week of trading and things will pick up again at the weekend. West End retailers have asked London Transport to tone down the advice on avoiding London so foot fall is expected to increase this week as people who'd previously avoided London for fears of being caught up in the predicted chaos return.

Retail Insolvencies are up by 10%

The Olympic games is giving our economy a well needed boost but two days in to them is the news that retail insolvencies are up by 10% this quarter. Many other retailers are in sale trying to offload the summer season merchandise that just hasn't sold due to the bad weather we've had for months, June and April being the wettest since records began. With well know high street names failing like Clinton Cards, Game, Habitat, Peacocks, and now Julian Graves it's all rather worrying.

PricewaterhouseCooper's figures show that insolvency numbers for retailers is 426 in the second quarter of 2012 compared to just 386 in the previous year. Reasons for some High St failures, apart from the bad weather, are said to be due to retailers operating too many stores and online sales having an impact as people look for better bargains.

However it's not all doom and gloom as other retailers are announcing their profits are up, such as William Hill and Harrods up by 15%, John Lewis at record profits, along with pound shops and coffee brands which are in expansion and opening new sites.

More insolvencies are expected as the remainder of 2012 is predicted to be particularly tough for the retail sector.

The Financial Benefits of the Olympics for our Economy

With the Olympics about to start and contracts coming to an end it's interesting to look at the impact of the Olympics on our economy. It's been a big investment so far but will reap rewards for businesses of all sizes small and large over the coming weeks.

So far British companies have been able to access almost £6 billion worth of contracts to build and supply the Olympic games, with 98% of contracts from the Olympic Delivery Authority going to UK based companies. Two thirds  of those went to small or medium sized enterprises.  Over 30,000 people will have worked on the Olympic site to get it ready as well as an approx contractor workforce of 100,000 to be employed during the event - although that figure will be slightly less now G4 have defaulted on their security contract.

On top of that LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) are using an estimated £700m worth of goods and services. It's good news for businesses, despite the overbearing protectiveness of the Olympic brands taken against bakeries for example. It's good to hear that the government wants rules relaxed around this and also are relaxing Sunday trading hours over the Olympics so retailers will be able to make the most of the event.

In a speech recently David Cameron said he thinks the Olympics will generate around £13 billion for our economy - figures based on UKTI studies on the impact of other games such as Sydney.

He said: "I am confident that we can derive over £13bn benefit to the UK economy over the next four years as a result of hosting the games. I am certain that when you add in the benefits from construction the total gain will be even greater."

Goldman Sachs estimate we will see an increase of 0.3 - 0.4 % GDP in the third quarter this year. That's a good stimulus for a flagging economy in times of recession - however temporary or long lived the impact the Olympics will have on our economy it looks to me like a positive thing for our country and for business.