Bill Palmer to Host AAPN Seminar on Social Media at Material World LA

June 24, 2009

AAPN and Activate Media group will host a seminar on leveraging Social Media in the Fashion Industry at Material World Los Angeles on September 30-October 2, 2009. Look for room and exact time information in the Show Directory.

MATERIAL WORLD ADDS WEST COAST EDITION IN FALL ‘09

“Material World West” Brings Global Fashion, Style Production Event To
Los Angeles Convention Center -- September 30-October 2, 2009

Urban Expositions and the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) will launch a West Coast fall edition of Material World, September 30-October 2, 2009, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California. Titled Material World West, the new edition will complement the well-established spring Material World Miami Beach event by bringing the extensive resources of the global fashion and style production event to a key target audience of apparel, home and footwear industry members from the Pacific Rim and United States, with special emphasis on the Western region.

“The industry has been encouraging us to bring Material World west for many years,” explains Tim von Gal, President of Material World. “California has the most important fashion manufacturing and import base in the United States. It is the home of top name brands and leading designers. California’s international accessibility lends itself to a diverse mix of participation. For those reasons and L.A.’s indisputable reputation as a Fashion city, it is the ideal location for a fall edition of our event.”

“The addition of Material World West will create new opportunities for all members of AAFA and our partnering organizations,” said Kevin M. Burke, president and CEO, AAFA. “Further, the new show will highlight the dynamic and growing West Coast apparel industry to our international partners.”

Material World West is an official event of the AAFA and is endorsed by other leading associations, including the American Apparel Producer’s Network, California Fashion Association, National Textile Association, and National Council of Textile Organizations. Material World West plans to work with other local and regional industry associations to benefit their membership.

Leading trend forecasters Pantone and Stylesight will extend their support of Material World to the California edition. Pantone is the official color authority of Material World and Stylesight is the official trend partner of the event.

Material World West will be a comprehensive presentation of the fashion and style industry supply chain. “Material World is more of an international product-development show for the fashion and style industries than it is just a textile show,” said Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association. “My understanding is that it will focus more on technology, equipment, facilitation, and the supply side of product development, including denim textiles and finishing organizations; segments not currently included in the local show.”

"Los Angeles is where fashion trends begin and we are delighted to welcome Material World to the Downtown region, the hub of the apparel industry on the West Coast," said Mark Liberman, president and CEO of LA INC., The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The apparel and textiles industry is the largest manufacturing sector in LA county and we are looking forward to hosting such a popular trade show that will showcase one of our City's most well-known attributes." The apparel and textiles industry generates $24.5 billion annually in wholesale volume, and Los Angeles employs more people in teh apparel and textiles industry than New York City.

While the Miami Beach and Los Angeles events will each highlight seasonal trends, timely educational opportunities and a tremendous selection of fabric, trim, technology and sourcing products and services, each edition will also capitalize on its geographical location to highlight key areas of focus that will differentiate it from the other.

Focusing on California’s position as a major manufacturing and fashion center, Material World West will bring together a broad base of traditional fabric, sourcing, technology and logistics resources. In addition, the West Coast event will include home fabrics resources and a garment production equipment and machinery section. Building upon Los Angeles’ proven position as the place where trends happen, Material World West will also feature expanded trend pavilions and forecasting presentations.

Entering its ninth year, the Miami Beach event, scheduled for April 21-23, 2009, capitalizes on the city’s undisputed position as an international trading hub and United States gateway to Latin America. It is also a city that naturally draws traffic from all over the US, Canada and Latin America. In fact, many of the country’s largest sourcing groups have set up their sourcing operations in Miami. For Latin America in particular, the Miami venue delivers a centralized trade show offering the largest fabric product and sourcing opportunities, technology and fashion information.

Like its Miami Beach counterpart, this exhibition will showcase the introductions and innovations from leading companies from around the world in every sector of apparel and home industries, including fabric and textiles, trims and components, full package/contract manufacturers, service providers, technology solutions, equipment and machinery.

The September 30-October 2, 2009 event is expected to attract key decision-makers, including presidents, general managers, chief information officers, manufacturing vice presidents, sourcing executives, product development executives, designers, manufacturers, purchasing agents, marketing executives, branded apparel companies and retailers, including mail order, private label and e-business, importers and others.

For 2009, both editions of Material World will also put a special spotlight on green products/services, performance, Technology Solutions and global matchmaking through special advance and on-site marketing efforts and focused educational tracks.

MATERIAL WORLD WEST QUICK FACTS:

Hours:         Wednesday, September 30, 2009 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
                   Thursday, October 1, 2009              10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
                     Friday, October 2, 2009                 10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Location: Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA

Travel: For discounted hotels, call Connections at 1.800.262.9974

Show Info: For exhibitor or attendee information on Material World, call 1.800.318.2238 or 678.285.3976.
E-mail: mwinquiry@urbanexpositions.com

Tags: AAPN , material world

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WWD Article: "Social Media Rewrites the Rules for Brands"

June 24, 2009

Social Media Rewrites the Rules for Brands
by LAUREN BENET STEPHENSON
From WWD ISSUE 06/24/2009

Fashion houses, designers and retailers are rushing into the free social
media phenomenon that is reshaping not only interpersonal communication, but
how apparel, accessories and beauty products are marketed and sold.

They are tweeting, blogging and updating their profiles in an effort to mold
their brand personalities on real-time global platforms and form
relationships with a community of customers, particularly consumers for whom
the Web is as important as a limb.

“Customers can feel like they are part of the brand’s extended family, and
therefore the brand itself, while the interactive element further deepens
that relationship,” said Alex Bolen, chief executive officer of Oscar de la
Renta. “These characteristics address and satisfy that ‘tribal’ part of the
fashion consumer — the way in which people identify themselves by the brands
they buy.”

A key component of social media “is real-time feedback — an ability to
accurately measure marketing results,” Bolen said. “While this aspect of the
Internet’s promise has yet to be fully realized, one can adjust, fairly
quickly, to emphasize those initiatives that are working best.”

The newness of the platforms has made quantifying the sales impact of social
media tough to pinpoint, although companies cite rising Web traffic and more
customers using promotions.

“How do you quantify something that prevents a customer service problem that
could’ve been a disaster,…[that] can create new buzz for a new product?”
asked Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth
College’s Tuck School of Business. “How do you quantify that? Where else can
you get that kind of instant feedback? It’s all unquantifiable and all
incredibly useful.”

Reggie Bradford, ceo of Vitrue, a social media consulting firm, believes
it’s important to view the situation in reverse, saying a brand will
ultimately be “measured in growth or losses by being there [on social media]
or not being there.”

More than any marketing medium, including print, where advertising is
suffering, social media give brands a chance to be a part of a dialogue
about their own companies. In this new and evolving framework, everyone is a
participant. According to Forrester Research, Facebook, with an estimated
200 million users, classifies two-thirds of its users as being of
post-college age, with 35-plus the fastest-growing demographic. Twitter, a
platform for messages of 140 characters or less that had 20 million unique
visitors in May, has 42 percent of its users in the 35-to-49 age range and
20 percent ages 25 to 34.

You don’t have to be famous to get a following, but it helps. The king of
the Twitter hill is Ashton Kutcher, who got into the game early and has more
than 2.3 million followers. Oprah Winfrey, whose first tweet didn’t come
until April — “HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY
21st CENTURY” — now has over 1.6 million followers.

The fascination with fashion has even helped breed followings for Twitterers
masquerading as major industry figures, including fakekarl (Lagerfeld) and
fakeanna (Wintour). WWD’s own Twitter page has grown to more than 688,000
followers from a mere 200 since its launch in February.

Designers such as Rachel Roy and Charlotte Ronson share snapshots of their
personal lives and their company’s activities via social media.

Brands including Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Nike
and Adidas also have tapped into YouTube, MySpace and other sites, where
their videos, commercials, behind-the-scenes footage and fashion shows are
posted.

“Everyone wants to know what makes [designers] tick, why they design, and
get closer to the brand,” said Frances Pennington, vice president of global
marketing for Juicy Couture.

Ronson said she updates her Twitter fans at least daily “letting them know
if something new comes in or something sells well. It’s a good way to keep
everyone connected.”

The designer maintains a Twitter page for her business —
Twitter.com/shopronson — with 2,084 followers since starting in the last
three months. It includes examples of the Twitter-as-marketing technique,
such as a recent tweet that said, “Just got in some great Rag & Bone
items…hats, ties and belts…come check it out!!!”

Ronson’s attention to her Twitter page has yielded results in her retail
site’s traffic. About 10 percent of Ronson’s total site traffic originates
on Twitter, and 93 percent are new visitors. Ronson also posts daily updates
on her personal Twitter page, Twitter.com/cjronson, which has 11,946
followers, with musings about her day, such as, “I’m watching ‘Funny Face,’
the musical with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire…Need I say more…”

Roy tweets several times daily on Twitter.com/rachel_roy and has attracted
1,672 followers who frequently retweet — the Twitter term for forwarding a
message — her posts. The designer mixes promotional tweets, such as, “The
entire RR 2010 Resort Collection Lookbook has been posted on Rachel Roy’s
official Facebook Page. Check it out,” with more personal tweets — “I found
some cute wellies by Hunter for my daughter and I — green for me and purple
for her. Here’s a link to more.”

The juxtaposition is engineered to nurture ties with customers. “I hope that
my relationship with customers will become more intimate as they get to know
me beyond my designs,” she said.

Facebook relaunched its company page platform in March with more options for
organizations to elevate “the power of the brand,” said Tom Arrix, the
site’s vice president of U.S. sales. The result is a company page that looks
identical to a user’s page, with a “Wall” where the company and its fans can
post messages, photos and video; a tab for information about the company,
and additional tabs where a firm can add everything from sale promotions to
trailers for new ad campaigns.

Facebook offers its users the ability to “fan” a firm or brand — a component
that sets it apart from a standard company Web site. Once a user has
“fanned” a brand, the business has direct access to them and is able to send
messages and updates via a constant news feed on the user’s home page.

The result is a “powerful brand advantage….The company is now in the middle
of two-way communication with their consumer,” Arrix said.

To join Twitter, a user creates a free user name and password and then sifts
through a search function to find friends and companies the user would like
to “follow.” Once a user is following a company, the user’s home page is
refreshed with every update that company sends. For instance, if
LouisVuitton_US tweets “Louis Vuitton’s new Core Values campaign profiled in
today’s @nytimes,” all 10,492 of its followers will see this message on
their home pages.

Some naysayers may find it hard to understand why a person would invite a
company into their virtual personal life by fanning a company on Facebook or
following them on Twitter, but millions have done just that.

It remains difficult to decipher what an online following means for
companies in the long term. The more established Facebook and MySpace now
have retention rates of almost 70 percent, according to Nielsen Media.
However, Nielsen Media estimated more than 60 percent of first-time Twitter
users neglected to return to the site after a month.

Vitrue created a Social Media Index to measure what people are talking about
online. The index is generated from an algorithm that scours the Internet
for a specific term on searches and social media networks and produces a
score. The higher the score, the more frequently that term has been
mentioned on the Web. Vitrue looked at 35 major fashion brands and retailers
from May 26 to June 1. The five most-talked-about brands were Gucci, Target,
Gap, American Apparel and Urban Outfitters.

These brands are, not coincidentally, active on social platforms. They
“leverage their presence on social networks, have great content [updated
frequently] and tools for engagement and conversation,” Bradford said.

“Fashion brands are emblematic of a person’s personality and how they want
to be perceived; it’s woven into [her] identity,” he said. “Everybody loves
brands — whether they’re generic or Gucci. It’s a statement.”

Gucci first became involved with Facebook in November 2008 after noticing
that about 50,000 fans had signed up for a Gucci page started by a person
unaffiliated with the fashion label. So Gucci decided to launch a company
page, raising the fan count to its current total of 402,502.

The weekly updated page contains original video uploaded to the site, photos
from events and new product announcements.

The Gucci by Gucci label launched its Twitter page —
twitter.com/GuccibyGucci — in March and has 2,840 followers.

The “currency of the Internet is such that if you’re not updating on a
timely basis, individuals are disappointed,” said Robert Triefus, worldwide
marketing and communications director for Gucci. “In fact, it can end up
backfiring.”

Target has used its Facebook page — with 452,856 fans — for advertising its
latest designer collaborations. The retailer most recently posted a video of
Dror Benshetrit explaining his collection for Target. The chain also used
the page to publicize its philanthropic efforts through a user-interactive
application. The company launched the “Bullseye Gives” campaign that allowed
its users to vote on the charity to which Target should give money. When a
user chose a charity, she was offered the option of publishing her choice to
her own news feed.

For instance, if Facebook user Jane Smith voted for Red Cross, it would
appear on her home page and on all of her friends’ news feeds, with the
message “Jane Smith voted for the Red Cross for the Target Bullseye Gives
project,” with a link to the Target Facebook page. This component is
illustrative of the allure of Web 2.0 — interacting with a customer who then
spreads the company’s message.

Gap has a Facebook fan page with 321,875 fans, and is active on Twitter with
5,269 followers. The Gap Facebook page has videos of designer Patrick
Robinson talking about the brand, as well as photos of events and original
content.

Urban Outfitters posts promotions and events, and encourages its 101,453
Facebook fans and 27,948 Twitter followers to get involved with the brand. A
recent Facebook post read: “It’s your favourite time of the year again —
Sale Time. Our Boutique sale starts today online and in store! This means
Luella, See by Chloé, Anglomania by Vivienne Westwood, Thomas Burberry,
Karen Walker, Peter Jensen et al. are all waiting for you; but not for
long!”

Within four days, 72 Facebook users had responded to that post, one of whom
recommended a particular Urban Outfitters location, saying, “Best sale
upstairs at santana row!”

When American Apparel and its ceo, Dov Charney, were embroiled in a lawsuit
filed by Woody Allen over unauthorized use of his image, the company used
its Twitter page, with 31,167 followers, and Facebook page, with 133,577
fans, for direct access to customers by posting its official statement on
Facebook and linking to Twitter. “We were able to speak and reassure
customers,” said Ryan Holiday, an American Apparel spokesman.

According to company estimates, 10 percent of all traffic to
americanapparel.net originates from four social media sites — Facebook,
Twitter, Chictopia and LookBook.

Oscar de la Renta and Donna Karan have each dedicated a Twitter page to
their “PR girls” — Twitter.com/OscarPRgirl and Twitter.com/dkny.
OscarPRgirl, which promotes itself as “reporting from inside one of the
world’s most prestigious design houses,” began tweeting on June 4 and has
162 followers. A recent tweet: “Hathaway is the new Hepburn: Anne H. looking
impossibly chic @ the tony awards in Oscar de la Renta.”

The DKNY page, which launched on May 8 and has 981 followers, bills itself
as providing “behind-the-scenes scoop from inside DKNY” written by a “PR
girl.” The tweets are personality-laced messages that promote the Donna
Karan label, such as “So great! Karen Olivo won the TONY (Award for “West
Side Story”). She looked so chic in Donna. Huge pic in the @dailynews.”

Betsey Johnson began her Twitter page, Twitter.com/xoBetseyJohnson, Jan. 23
and has 8,068 followers. The page is updated several times daily with
promotional tweets such as “Don’t miss out on our Memorial Day sale!
Tomorrow is your last day to save 30%!” mixed with attentive dialogue with
her followers — for instance one follower said “doing some damage on the
@xoBetseyJohnson Web site. retail therpy” and xoBetseyJohnson responded
“Nice! Everyone needs retail therapy! Xox”).

“We saw [social media] as a real opportunity to reach out to customers, to
use it as free advertising and be a human voice for the brand,” said Agatha
Szczepaniak, public relations director.

Kate Spade coined the term “tweetwriter” — a combination of “Twitter” and
“typewriter” — as a tool in the company’s venture into social media. The
Tweetwriter is an antique typewriter, which was set up in the brand’s Fifth
Avenue store in May. The staff encourages customers to type messages they
would like to see on the Kate Spade Twitter page, which has 641 followers.
Eclectic entries such as, “from 135 5th ave: i could watch the clouds pass
all day” fill the page, giving it a quirky feel. Lindsay Stevens, director
of marketing and strategy, said the aim is to project “a collective point of
view from our customers.”

Juicy Couture launched an interactive social media platform on its own site,
called Club Couture. The technology allows consumers to put together looks
from the collection and share the outfits with friends who can then rate the
outfit and create their own.

This social interaction has resulted in a conversion rate 162 percent higher
than any other part of the site — meaning a user who happens upon the Club
Couture page on the company’s Web site is 1.62 times more likely to purchase
an outfit on the site than if she had been browsing any other page on
juicycouture.com.

It is essential for businesses to have a clear strategy and goals regarding
social media, said analyst Diane Clarkson of Forrester Research, who wrote
the report, “How Twitter Can Influence eBusiness.” Diving in without them is
not a viable option.

Social media is “a little bit of a Pandora’s box,” Gucci’s Triefus said. “If
you’re going to get involved, you have to have the resources to be able to
do it correctly.”

If a brand isn’t vigilant, a constantly adapting, public organism like
Twitter or Facebook might do more harm than good. For instance, a “Twitter
storm” is a digital mob of sorts that forms around a topic or current event
— which, when negative in nature, can harm a company’s image if there’s no
counterpoint from the brand in question.

“We’ve seen Twitter storms with fast backlash when a company does something
that [fans] don’t like,” Clarkson said. “I’d want someone accountable for
the brand to be behind that.”

What appears certain, however, is social media platforms will keep evolving,
proliferating and gaining influence.

“The fashion world is shifting, needs are changing and people’s shopping
habits are changing….It’s clear that [consumers on social media] are part of
the overall fashion conversation,” Roy said. “And I don’t think that is
going to change.”