The results

We began the task by making mindmaps over the situation as we saw it. After the research we had made we all noticed that the marketing of Baltic Fashion was, atleast in Finland, still very little. We started to look at opportunities to make the network stronger, and at the same time make Baltic Fashion more noticed among people.

We came up with a few ideas, and here they are:

Workshop

The marketing is a big deal in being a fashion entrepreneur, but still there’s a lack of knowledge in the area, among the designers. We thought it would be a good way of teaching the entrepreneurs how to market themselves, to organize a workshop for them.

The duration would be about 10h. The day would start with some presentations or lectures from big designers in Finland (or outside Finland), they could tell what they have done to get from the bottom to the top.  It would give an idea for the entrepreneurs of how much work you have to put in marketing yourself. After the presentation the workshop itself would begin.  The participates would work in groups, and the task would be, that with the help of experts, create a “brand” and market in, under one day. To start from scratch and see what are all the thing you need to know to make your brand sell.

The problem seems to be that the designers don’t have the time to put to study things like this. And if you go to a company that’s suppost to help you to get your company started, you most often end up with lots of paper with the information, but no help what so ever on the practical side.

Fashion competition

The idea is to organize a competition among designers in the Baltic Fashion network. All the designers who wish to participate would send in their portfolio to a jury, who would pick the contestants who gets to be in the competition. After this there would be a campaign, for example on facebook, where the contestants would show their designs. And then there would be a public voting of who should win. The winner could get a contract with a bigger company, and get to produce a line that would be in the stores. It would give the winner an opportunity to see how a bigger company works, and at the same time get more publicity for her/his own name and clothing.

Exhibition

Baltic Fashion would organize events also in Finland. An exhibition is a way of getting publicity for both Baltic Fashion and the designers. Fashion attracts people, and the exhibition and convention center know how to market the happenings that are there. There could be fashion shows, and fashion sales, an opportunity for buyers to meet the designers. It would be a good way to get publicity.

Platform

The things that were mentioned above are all practical ways of getting the network more activated. But we also thought of an internet site that would get the network to work better and more together.

The websites of Baltic Fashion are very good. You find the information you need, and there’s a lot going on. The thing is however, that there’s really not much for the designer on the sites. So what would be needed is a site for the designers to talk, see and hear.

There are smaller sites where designer can make their own profile, but many don’t know of them. So we thought it would be useful to have a platform, where designer would create their own profile, and set up a portfolio if they like. There could be information of different events that they might be interested in. There would be different forums where you can discuss different topics. There could also be an application you can download on your smartphone, so that you have easy access to the site. It would be a good site for the designers to keep themselves activated and updated, and an opportunity for buyers to contact designers they are interested in.

It would also be good to active Baltic Fashions sites on for example Facebook and Twitter. They are the places people visit nowadays, and it’s an easy way to be seen among people. At the moment there are only ca. 200 people who “likes” Baltic Fashion on Facebook, and that is not much. Also it would be good for the designers to use Instagram. It’s an easy “program” to upload photos, and mark them with a ” #Baltic Fashion”. It such a small thing fo the designers to do, and it would give so much more visibility for Baltic Fashion and it’s network.

There’s small things that would help a lot, and make people see what Baltic Fashion does.

/Bthing58

The way to our result during Kunstenniemi

After our background re-searches before Kunstenniemi we had a quite good clue
about the market´s situation for the fashion design entrepreneurs. We find a few good articles and material that helped us understand what all fashion designers is missing in there own business. Through this material we also got to understand how hard it is to come out on the market to compete with other fashion companies. A good example is all the big fashion labels that have grown and are continuously growing because of the labels branding.

In Kunstenniemi we get the task to develop a business clinique for fashion entrepreneurs. In fashion you must be known on the market before you can sell any products, you must build a brand around yourself. How do you do it and in which way? These were the things what we concentrated on. We tried to think in different ways, more about concretive things like learning by doing, competitions in marketing for the own products and so on. How can we develop a whole package with resent stuff that helps now and in the future?
We came up to develop a workshop that helps entrepreneurs to understand the market and the marketing aspects with different kinds of tools. The main tool for the workshop is old successful designers that tells how they have grown to a big brand and give advices for the young entrepreneurs. In the workshop they will build an own brand in teams in 10 hours, it will conclude all from marketing plan to brand strategy.
After they have formed an own brand they will try to compete with other entrepreneurs what they learn on the workshop and try to use the new information in real life. The competition includes marketing the own brand in a month in different medias where the public can vote on its favourite and the winner get a deal with a fashion house.

To get known in the market the designers have to show their own products for the consumers, that’s why we thought that the designers need an own exhibition. At the time we do not have much of these happenings in Finland. That is why this could be a really good opportunity for Baltic Fashion to start build a new marketing way for new fashion designers.

The last thing that we thought of was that it is hard to find the new entrepreneurs and how can the entrepreneurs themselves find resent information for their own business?
For that we came up with a platform were we gathered all from chat forum and good information about marketing etc. This platform can be called as the fashion entrepreneurs´ social media.

/Bthing58

Kunstenniemi.

Presentation @Boost

We had a great time at Kunstenniemi and we came up with a lot of great ideas. Today we had the final presentation at Boost Turku. We’re really satisfied with our work and we hope that Baltic Fashion also likes it.

Laura and Niklas presented our ideas.

Kunstenniemi 15.4

We arrived at Kunstenniemi at 12 o’clock today. We started the day by having lunch and being delegated to our cottages.

After a short gathering with all the participates we will now start to work with our task.

We have a lot of ideas that we will work with. We’re going to have some creative days in head of us. 🙂

Let’s do this!

/Bthing58

Fridas portfolio

Min portfolio

Fashion in Finland

The Finnish fashion industry has its roots in the 19th century handcraft ateliers in Turku. Some of Finland’s most successful fashion brands are Marimekko and Vuokko they are founded in the 1950’s. Design has been an important industry in Finland for over a century. Finns have always been proud of the own design, especially when it’s doing well internationally. Design is bound to time and place, but fashion is probably the most short-lived branches in design. The fashion design is valued of fashion professionals and also by the people who consume it.

The trademark for Finnish fashion has always been pure and clear forms and postmodernism. These are quite descriptive adjectives, but they are by no means limited only to Finnish design. They are global trends and core elements of Scandinavian design.

Some traits that are typical for Finnish fashion are for example nature. It has been a very strong influence throughout the history of Finnish design and art. Nature has been a source of raw material and inspiration: most classical Finnish design from the 20th century has been manufactured from natural fibers, or from wood, steel and glass. Also the forms are often inspired by natural elements, or they can be seen even as imitations of nature.

Another major feature of Finnish fashion design is individualism. Finnish designers create distinct looks for individuals with a strong sense of style, not for the masses. This is of course a very restrictive feature which limits the target group considerably. It also makes the Finnish fashion industry more interesting and varied than some of the competing fashion industries. Overall it can be said that Finnish design is very design and aesthetics-oriented, as opposed to maximizing profits.

Globally appreciated values like ethics and sustainability are also important themes in Finnish fashion: in the core is the thought that a garment is made to withstand time. Moreover, the designers want to provide a safe and fair working environment for seamstresses wherever they work; production could not be situated in a country where the employees could easily be exploited.

Niklas

Baltic Fashion

The Baltic fashion project is a project aimed at revitalizing fashion production in the Baltic Sea Region. Other goals such as increasing collaboration between nations and strengthening fashion in this particular area are also important for this project. The project as a whole is funded by the European Union.

The project focuses on putting innovation in the limelight. It encourages new production methods, technologies, trends and materials, and the development of sustainability. Baltic fashion will be promoting eco-friendly products and materials, regional production, entrepreneurship for women and cultural identity will be strengthened. Benefit fashion businesses are also promoted in the Baltic Sea Region.

The project has many international partners. Countries collaborating with the project are for example Finland, Latvia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia and Sweden. The project runs throughout 2011-2013.

The project has developed a network aimed at uniting designers from the Baltic Sea Region, where information can be shared on the internet.

The Baltic Sea projects goal is to insinuate a collaboration between a combination of financial institutions, regional authorities and business support agencies, fashion associations and educational facilities to create and independent Baltic Sea Region network with furthermore goals.
These goals are to:

•  Fortify both international performances in the Baltic Sea Region fashion sector and the     support structures it boasts. This will be done through the development of an information platform, meetings and analyses’ that lead to a common set of actions.

• To make sure the knowledge on innovations in the sector is both transferred and promoted. It is exceptionally important for the eastern BSR countries focusing on sustainable development to receive the crucial information.  

•  To further develop business support activities and facilities, create new and sufficient spaces for both industry cooperation and internationalization, and finally to facilitate the shift of fashion production back to the Baltic Sea Region.

 

 

Changes.

So this has been an interesting task, not only as the project, but also as our group has changed many times. 

At this point there’s three of us left. We, Laura, Frida and Niklas are working hard to get the job done. Lets hope no more changes accure. 🙂

Good night everybody!

Laura

Hållbar marknadskommunikation

We don’t know what our task is about but I chose to read a book about market communication. I think market communication is important in all companies.  The book is written by Anna Katarina Berglund and Pia Boson.

It’s important to have clear goals and chose you’re target group in all marketing. We must know what we want to achieve in order to have a chance to get there and we need to know why in order to understand the context and get motivation. The book brought up how important it is to choose the right marketing channel for different target groups and how important it´s to think about what message you want to send.

Planning process of the market communication
1.    Analysis of the market
2.    Definition of the target group
3.    Analysis of the target group and of their needs and behaviors
4.    Choice of strategy to reach get the message to the target group
5.    Tactical planning
6.    Accomplishment
7.    Feedback and evaluation

I look forward to next week when we get the task.