New brands are breaking into the fashion scene every day. These up-and-coming businesses each have their own target customer and their own unique business models and engagement tactics.
In an effort to connect these emerging brands with the latest and greatest tech companies, Fashion Digital is holding its inaugural Best of LA awards. Winners will be announced at the annual Fashion Digital LA event, which will be held May 19 in Los Angeles, Calif. Executives from BCBG Max Azria Group, Charming Charlie, JustFab, O’Neill and Skullcandy, among others, are scheduled to speak at the event.
During the nomination process, Fashion Digital garnered more than 100 responses from industry players. But the team ran into a problem: Nominations represented less than 10 brands in the LA area, and “had little to no variety in size or consumer market,” noted Sandy Hussain, Founder and CEO of Fashion Digital. “For example, REVOLVE Clothing and Nasty Gal were repeated over and over, but they’re both large bands and big targets for tech vendors. What about all the other retailers out there?”
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Leveraging a combination of social media data and qualitative research, Fashion Digital developed a list of 10 brands for seven different categories (a total of 70 nominations) that were “true to our fashion roots and deserved being celebrated,” Hussain said. “Hopefully the Best of LA will draw awareness to a wider variety of fashion brands so that their needs can be serviced by technology companies.”
The Best of LA aligns perfectly with Fashion Digital’s goals for all of its events: To take traditional vendor-focused content off the table and focus on the wants, needs and innermost thoughts of fashion brands and retailers.
“When I formed Fashion Digital, I did so with the intention of educating fashion retailers about technology,” Hussain noted. “But I soon discovered technology providers were in the dark about the fashion industry. They either had the services fashion retailers needed but didn’t position those services right or they provided services that were not a right fit for the fashion retailer.”
In addition to closing the product-user gap in the fashion market, Hussain has developed a daylong event comprising of educational panels and discussions regarding the latest fashion and retail trends.
Fashion Digital is extending the awards to London and New York City, as well. Nominations are now open for the London conference.
Click here to vote for the Best of LA awards.
