Develop Your Own Business

1. What are your expectations from taking part in the BRICS+ Fashion Summit showroom? Why might this event benefit both global and local brands?

 

Julia Dalakian, Founder, Julia Dalakian Fashion House:

There are very few industry exhibitions where you can display your original collections, rather than just mass-market ones. It is the coverage of this type of event that makes it so useful. It gives you a chance to see today’s fashion industry’s different design concepts and show what you can do on the fashion market.

 

Anastasia Zadorina, Founder, the ZASPORT brand:

We find it fascinating that we can both showcase our products and see what our foreign colleagues are producing, share experience, and talk about current trends, industry challenges and ways to address them. 

 

Antonio Shin, Founder, the SHIN brand:

We see the event as a great opportunity for expanding our presence in the BRICS countries. The Summit enables local brands to go global. All brands dream of exporting their products but there can be no global expansion without third-party investment. That is why the support received by clothing manufacturers from the government and the Fashion Fund is an invaluable chance for every participant in the BRICS+ Fashion Summit.

 

Alexandra Zhurina, Founder, the 1377 brand:

What we expect from the event is to find new partners, exchange ideas and experience. BRICS+ Fashion Summit gives local brands a chance to promote their products on a global scale, share their unique ideas and show that local designers can be competitive on the global market.

 

Alexandra Gapanovich, Founder, the GAPANOVICH brand:

I mostly expect to meet new wholesale customers and find new outlets for my brand. This will help the brand grow with new customers and develop as a business.

 

Nadezhda Abzaeva, Founder, the ABZAEVA brand:

This is my first time participating in an event where brands introduce their collections to industry peers and customers in a showroom format. I think this is a very cool and useful format that helps network with other industry players and promotes future cooperation.

 

Yana Besfamilnaya, Founder, the Yana Besfamilnaya brand:

We hope that participation in the Summit will help us improve our brand recognition and its status, as well as source new bulk orders.

 

2. Which global and local issues should be discussed as priorities at events such as the BRICS+ Fashion Summit? If you were to pick a topic for the Summit’s business programme, what would you focus on first of all?

 

Julia Dalakian, Founder, Julia Dalakian Fashion House:

We should keep in mind that fashion, in its procedure and purpose, is first of all an art, and only then an occupation, though a very prestigious and beautiful one. We need to develop both haute couture traditions and manufacturing of modern mass fashion garments.

I would devote part of the business programme to discussing professional training for the staff who bring the designer’s ideas to life. We must promote career guidance in clothing manufacture, specifically for tailors that actually work as designer assistants and not just sewing shop staff.

 

Anastasia Zadorina, Founder, the ZASPORT brand:

Development of the industry in general is a systemic process with one thing leading to another. Unfortunately, young people have lost interest in professions such as garment worker, pattern cutter, or lab technician, and we are experiencing serious staff shortages in the industry. It goes without saying that we need financial resources, skilled personnel, ambitious people who are in love with fashion and want to see it develop – the industry will collapse without them. This is why the issue of qualified staff is the most pressing: how do we find them, train them, get them interested, keep them motivated and develop their skills?

We cannot work in isolation from the rest of the world: we depend on supplies of fabrics and accessories. Supply chains have been through major transformations and are now being rebuilt from scratch. It would also be very interesting to talk about these aspects and to do some productive networking.

 

Antonio Shin, Founder, the SHIN brand:

The entire world of fashion should focus on supply chain management. Producing capsule or fully-featured collections is an easy job for a brand but further scaling up involves huge risks: almost all retailers take merchandise on consignment.

We would like to see a system where designers supply their collections for a year in advance, with a 30% advance payment from the buyers. Then brands could develop naturally, making a profit as soon as the product is finished. Everyone would have a chance to join manufacturers’ waiting lists and receive their orders within 2–3 months. And today, brands are struggling because they only have 2–3 weeks manufacturing time. In this situation, we are forced to either repurchase the waiting list, thus collapsing the production price, or to degrade the quality of the manufactured product.

Hence, most outlets and brands have no time to sell garments during the season owing to delays. As a result, 30 to 60% of products end up in the brand’s warehouses or get sold at a discount or on promotion.

 

Alexandra Zhurina, Founder, the 1377 brand:

It is the lack of occupational training for tailors. Even though we have lots of sewing shops, there are very few really qualified garment workers, most of them being from the “old guard”. We need a new format of secondary vocational education in our country – with networking, information and experience sharing, and with a ranking of professional categories. An important marker for handicraft workers is skill, not speed. 

 

Nadezhda Abzaeva, Founder, the ABZAEVA brand:

I would like to hear about different aspects of how brands cooperate with manufacturers of different sizes. It would also be interesting to learn what production strategies brands choose for promoting sustainable development and what buyer collaboration formats they use.

 

Yana Besfamilnaya, Founder, the Yana Besfamilnaya brand:

For me, essential issues include the environmental component of fashion, integration of the Russian fashion industry into the global agenda, new in fabric creation technologies and development of the garment industry in Russia.

 

3. What development trends in the business, culture, sustainability, or technology formats for your business are you most interested in right now, and why?

 

Julia Dalakian, Founder, Julia Dalakian Fashion House:

Training staff across all phases of garment manufacture, as well as production of fabrics using the latest technological and aesthetic solutions. We are interested in developing and promoting the traditions of a fashion house that engages in high-quality fabrication of haute couture products and also develops clothing pieces for mass production, relying on a robust technological and aesthetic component.

 

Anastasia Zadorina, Founder, the ZASPORT brand: 

One of our priorities is to localize product manufacture in our country to the maximum. To make it happen, we opened a ZASPORT factory in Bashkortostan with the latest equipment from leading global vendors for producing up to 562 thousand pieces of our products annually. Speaking of our retail chain, we now have 11 outlets in different cities, from Moscow to Kaliningrad. We plan to expand the list of our regions of presence and we also sell our products through leading online marketplaces and at zasport.com.

Our brand focuses on various activities, including development of new collections, retail marketing, collaboration, joint projects with sports clubs, corporate clothing, B2B clients and industrial clothing. We are developing and upscaling each of these elements.

 

Alexandra Zhurina, Founder, the 1377 brand:

We really want to grow in the offline segment. At the moment, we only operate online but the most recent markets at the Moscow Fashion Week have shown that customers want to see our products live. That is why our priority goal is to launch a small corner store or showroom.

We also expect to meet buyers at this Summit who will be interested in our product.

 

Alexandra Gapanovich, Founder, the GAPANOVICH brand:

I am planning to attend the intensive fashion course ‘Globalization in the Fashion Industry. Local Concepts in Creating a Successful Global Brand’ scheduled during this Summit. I find most of the issues on its agenda interesting.

 

Nadezhda Abzaeva, Founder, the ABZAEVA brand:

I have a small niche concept clothing brand. My ideology is to bring past and modern trends together in my brand by rethinking the local history of our roots, genetic memory and new technologies. This is why, on the one hand, the idea of sustainable development and eco-friendly fit is important for me in the brand. On the other hand, I love using new technologies, such as 3D modelling and neural networks.

 

Yana Besfamilnaya, Founder, the Yana Besfamilnaya brand:

Our priority is to develop the brand on the domestic market. And we would like to expand our product portfolio. We want to find denim and knitwear manufacturers, and it would be great to do this in Russia.

 

4. What are the catchiest aspects of your collection to be demonstrated in the BRICS+ Fashion Summit showroom that will attract buyers?

 

Julia Dalakian, Founder, Julia Dalakian Fashion House:

This season, we are bringing back lacework and coupling it with a brutal urban sport-chic style. Another important aspect of our collection is the new methods for conditioning traditional fabrics, such as velvet, linen and denim, which we boil off at a certain stage of the fabrication process to give the final product a “vintage” texture and a very stylish look.

 

Antonio Shin, Founder, the SHIN brand:

Really good buyers that treat brands as their partners can only be attracted by timely deliveries and the product resembling the specimen in the showroom.

 

Alexandra Zhurina, Founder, the 1377 brand:

Our collections include only a small number of clothing pieces, which is directly explained by environmental concerns. Today, when the market is cluttered with tonnes of substandard clothes manufactured almost every week, we hold by the “Minimum for maximum” philosophy: it is better to have one high-quality garment in your wardrobe that will last for many years than many items only good for a single season. All in all, our collection offers an innovative approach to fashion by blending style, quality, sustainability and distinctive design. We know for sure that these aspects will attract buyers at the Summit.

 

Alexandra Gapanovich, Founder, the GAPANOVICH brand:

If we look at previous buyer sessions, the washed cotton capsule will definitely catch the buyers’ attention, as well as feminine and closed garments that will also appeal to customers who prefer a modest style. The brand’s DNA and bold style provide another catchy aspect.

 

Nadezhda Abzaeva, Founder, the ABZAEVA brand:

The showroom will display tactile clothes made from natural fabrics with hand-made textures, such as jackets and waistcoats. We will also have sculptured puffer waistcoats that were originally designed in 3D, and knitted sets with a print created by a neural network based on the sounds of the wind on Olkhon Island on Lake Baikal.

 

Yana Besfamilnaya, Founder, the Yana Besfamilnaya brand:

Our collection largely re-imagines office wear. A classic skirt becomes an avant-garde metallic piece, a “clerk’s shirt” turns into a sexy garter shirt, and the tie, which is the essential symbol of the office, gets orange pins. These designs have already become our best-sellers. All the items from this collection are a perfect match for one another, giving the customer a wide range of combination options.