IMG Fashion Asia Pacific MD Simon P Lock, the man who thrust Australian fashion onto the world stage, is in town for the Lakme Fashion Week, which kicks off tomorrow in Mumbai and runs till 1 April 2006. Lock, the founder and former CEO of Fashion Innovators (AFI), as too the region's premier fashion event, Mercedes Australian Fashion Week, took over as head of IMG Fashion AsiaPac after his company was bought out by IMG in October 2005. The acquisition by IMG also included the management and production of the Mercedes-Benz Start Up program in Australia and New Zealand, the Mercedes-Benz Asia Fashion Award program that is currently held in six countries throughout Asia, the Singapore Fashion Festival and other fashion events around the Asia Pacific region in development, including events in India, China and Japan. Indiantelevision.com's Ashwin Pinto caught up with Lock to find out more about IMG Fashion and its plans. |
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How has IMG expanded its presence in the fashion world in the past five years? |
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Anything else? |
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In what way has the business model evolved along with the industry? |
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How difficult is it to find sponsorship? So if you are an international brand like Lakme or Olympus or Mercedes Benz and looking to create an association with the fashion industry and therefore reach consumers then IMG Fashion can be a valuable partner for you. |
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How has the takeover of the takeover of IMG by investment company Forstmann Little & Co impacted the company? |
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How is IMG Fashion looking to leverage the Internet and new media? This is the first time it has been done live anywhere in the world. It was successful. The site imgfashionworld.com started to rank alongside other great event sites around the world like Wimbledon, US Open. It is a win win value proposition and allows us another window to showcase our collection. |
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Is the mobile also an opportunity? As consumers we do not know what we want out of this new media. But IMG Fashion is well positioned to deliver the content in whatever manner it suits the consumer. It is a question how we apply content to the medium. |
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How important a market is India for IMG from the fashion side compared to other Asian countries? |
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Could you talk about some of the learnings from other countries that you have applied for the Indian market? |
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What are the ways in which IMG is leveraging the synergies between fashion and the worlds of music and entertainment? It stars top designers like John Paul Gautier, Gucci, Prada. We have an indirect relationship with the film world. Many designers who participate in our fashion Weeks dress film celebrities. |
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What role do major events like the Oscar Awards play in increasing synergy between the world's of entertainment and fashion? The downside is that some of the mystique is lost when viewers find out that the dress is being returned tomorrow along with the jewelry. This is something though that the industry has to learn to live with. When you have a celebrity for a fashion event the danger is that he/she might have their own aims. This need not be promoting their designers. When the relationship works well in terms of the celebrity talking about the designer and vice versa. It needs to be balanced though. A personal connection helps when a celebrity likes to wear a particular designers clothes, as it looks good on them. It does not always happen though. |
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Could you talk about how IMG increases the brand equity of a fashion event through its expertise? So they know that the return on investment is strong. At the end of the day we bring measurable outcomes to participants. Without commercial outcomes we cannot commercially substantiate our involvement or their involvement. Our aim is never to create a homogenous Fashion Week circuit. In New York it has its own style and personality of showcasing sports wear. Los Angeles, Mumbai, Sydney are also distinctive. The inherent nature of the industry allows each event to be different. Indian designers have a certain, style, feel and way of doing business. We have no intention of taking this spirit away. We want to embrace and enhance that spirit. Lakme fashion Week has sense of community and that is the spirit. |
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What is the main difference between organising a fashion event and a sports event? The basic principles are the same. You need organisational skills for both. However, a specific expertise a required to run fashion events. This means that you have to understand the industry. Organising a fashion event is a question of management - order, discipline, logistics, delivery. |
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What are the ways in which IMG meets these challenges? There is no point in having a creative Fashion Week if the sets fall down. If it is not run on time or the media is not getting what is going on, then the event will be affected. |
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Are you satisfied with how television channels cover the fashion industry or do you feel that there is a need for greater in-depth coverage? What I am trying to get at is that the genuine understanding of the fashion business is very low in India among journalists in particular and the media in general. If an Indian designer comes out tomorrow on the catwalk with a Gucci rip off then the journalist must be able to spot it. That is your responsibility to the consumer. To do that you have to take your journalism and research equity very seriously. We need to see more of that in India. What ultimately works is mutual respect between the two parties. |
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On its part what efforts is IMG taking to make its fashion events more TV friendly? We have excellent lighting and sound. So the quality that we can get out of our events is good. We have great partnerships like with Zee here. We also did one with Microsoft in the US. IMG owns one of the largest television production companies in the world -TWI. So we have a lot of experience in this area. |
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In India one problem that the fashion industry commonly faces is charges of copying of designs. What in your view is the solution and is this problem faced in other countries? The overall challenge is in fighting for the consumer dollar against different industries like cosmetics, entertainment, food etc. Hopefully we will get our fair share and this can be done by providing people with the right products. |
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Could you talk about IMG's expansion plans globally on the fashion side? We have development plans for new events across the Asia Pacific region. We can talk about this when the time is right. |
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What are the plans that IMG has for India going forward? The event has to be of a high quality so that designers want to participate. So content has to grow. Then again there is no good having great content if you do not tell people about it. Our job is to tell people globally what is going on here. |
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