Fashion Exposed Business Seminars

Fashion Exposed is a trade industry event and I've had the pleasure of being involved with Fashion Exposed for some time. From judging the Debut winners for 2 years and then launching my Retail Workshop during the Sydney event earlier this year.

Due to popular demand, I'm hosting the same Retail Workshop (with a few updates) for the Melbourne event next week, however this year, I'm part of a larger business seminar program. With a fantastic round up of speakers, these seminars are aimed at the business makers behind fashion from emerging labels through to large business chains.

Discussing topics like the new season Trends, Sustainability, Mens retailing, global retail trends and of course my workshops "Trade Secrets" - a comprehensive workshop discussing branding, marketing, visual merchandising, customer engagement and social media aimed at the boutique retailer.

The seminars run over 2 days - Sunday 29 August and Tuesday 31st August. Tickets are available on the Fashion Exposed website.

Sportsgirl embraces Bloggers

On Monday 8th February I was invited to attend the Sportsgirl Roadshow parade for Autumn Winter 2010. Primarily, this is put on for the Sportsgirl retail team, however this year, they invited a few Melbourne Bloggers to attend to take a sneak peak at the action. It’s an interesting strategy on Sportsgirl’s behalf. The bloggers feature their own reviews and photo’s from the parade, and share this with their communities.

Jade Roberts (PR Manager) said she has been working with bloggers for 2 years and finds they are effective for reaching out to potential/existing Sportsgirl customers because of their strong community followings and unique perspectives on fashion. It’s also helpful due to the fact that online is immediate and Sportsgirl is all about fast fashion.

Whilst at the parade I chatted with Kate Elton, Online and Events Manager whose position was created to cater to the new Sportsgirl community website some 8 months ago. Kate's role varies from updating the website daily with product, blog posts and articles to managing the social networking community (twitter, facebook etc). Kate has found Twitter has been incredibly popular in the last year and uses it to offer sneak peek's to their twitter followers. She finds the website sections that are most popular are to do with 'style advice' i.e. Style Snaps and Style Me.

The parade was a high-energy event with a Circus/ Moulin Rouge/ Vaudeville theme and featured smiling models (a refreshing change that epitomised the perfect Sports-girl)! The audience gasps, laughs, claps and general buzz was a combination of lust (for the pieces they have yet to own) and $$ signs clicking over in their heads (as they saw what would sell in their respective Sportsgirl stores)! This roadshow was a great way of inspiring the Sportsgirl staff about what's coming in store as well as offering the wider Sportsgirl community the opportunity to share the night through the bloggers attending.

Rear View Mirror!

Jeanswest have come up with a unique solution for that painful rear-view-jean-trying-on-experience. How many times have you contorted your neck in ways that a neck just shouldn't have to reach (much to the dismay of many a chiropractor) to check that your rear view is flattering in jeans?

Enter the "butt cam"! Jeanswest have installed Butt Cam's in their fitting rooms in their Bondi, Rundle Mall and Chadstone fitting rooms with a further roll out planned for other stores. If you're feeling like this is a big brother moment, don't fear. The Butt Cam is not a recording device, merely a mute Trinny & Susannah experience in the communal area of the fitting rooms!

Causing quite a stir, the Butt Cam even made its way onto Coco Perez who thought Peaches Geldolf and other celeb's might benefit from this experience as well!

A big shout out to Jeanswest for thinking practically about a customers retail experience!