Feature | Young talents get a boost at LFW!

Like any other industry fashion and art too has its own share of healthy competition and individuals with go getter attitude.Its these individuals who have a strong urge to create a difference in the market and hence they launch their own creations.The question remains how much they are able to make their labels a success in this cut-throat environment where likes and dislikes change every minute.

It is well said that fashion finds its freedom in the art of individuals. There is a lot talent and innovation. If we see, platforms like lakme fashion week have also started helping the new and upcoming talents. The international concept of showcasing designs in mini shows in the form of "Talent Box' introduced by LFW last season was a great success. This season witnessed an increased in the number of applications; almost 20 designers showcased through the Talent Box shows.

There were workshops conducted to motivate and guide the aspiring fashion designers along with students from different schools of fashion.

Given the fact that fashion weeks offer an opportunity to young designers who have not much business acumen but have talents galore, we at Adgully spoke to some industry experts like Stefan Siegel, Founder, Not Just A Label (NJAL), Krishna Mehta, a veteran designer and some young designers like Mayank Anand and Shraddha Nigam to know how difficult and easy is to create your own label and make a mark for themselves. Also we discussed about the problems faced and how the new entrants should go about starting on their own.

Stefan Siegel, Founder, Not Just A Label (NJAL) which is the world's leading designer platform for showcasing and nurturing today's pioneers in contemporary fashion, gave an amazing presentation at lakme fashion week summer/resort 2012. Commenting on the chance and initiative taken by LFW to promote young talents, he said, "LFW's initiative to promote young talents is an amazing step. It not only gives a chance to the young designers but also motivates and guides the aspiring designers from various fashion schools. As like in my workshop about 100 design students from the local NIFT School and emerging talents joined me to discuss the exciting market that is India."

Commenting about how fashion market is, he said, "Firstly, Fashion is a very competitive business and is a very saturated market. One needs to be really innovative in this market. It takes a lot of energy to survive in the initial years as may be financial problems would arise but one needs to be really strong as it takes time for the feedback." He believes that this market is really fragile and volatile and based on trends or on people creating trends. It is a very accelerated and a fast growing industry as everyone entering the industry gets something new.

Krishna Mehta was of the opinion that this industry is all about standing out different. People are not looking at the designers for clothes with different fabrics but what they expect from a designer is something different in terms of designs and creation.

Mehta believes that three basic problems that are being faced by an entrepreneur in this industry are: infrastructure, finance and sales and marketing. Mayank Anand and Shraddha Nigam, new entrants in fashion industry said, "Initially we also faced many challenges like finance and infrastructure but you need to know how you face them and solve them. It is very important to have expert advice and guidance. We never had godfathers in this space but platforms like Lakme fashion week played a vital role in guiding us."

As we all know creating a business might be easy but maintaining it is really difficult, so when asked so as how important is to have a proper marketing strategy in the business plan, Siegel said, "It is important but more important is to do a proper research about various markets and the on-going trends. The focus should be to have a proper public relation."

When asked how important is to have a proper marketing strategy in the business plan, Mehta opined that it is very important to have a right marketing strategy because you should know how the market is and what needs to be sold and what not and most importantly how much money you need to spend and if all this is not strategized it would be a big problem.

Mayank Anand and Shraddha Nigam said that one should always have a marketing strategy. You should go step by step because creating a label might be easy but maintaining it in such a competitive market is really difficult.

Now that the whole world is moving towards digital and it is expected that digital is the way forward, so explaining how important is digital marketing and the importance of on line fashion today,

There is a huge buzz in the fashion industry as well¦it's not easy to create and maintain your label. Fashion industry is really competitive and a massive one. so keep all the suggestions and points discussed above in mind before starting your own label.