Have These Fashion Giants "Found Their Conscience"?

According to the World Clothing, Shoes and Hats Network fashion Brand and behind designer One of the biggest problems is funding. Although it is not uncommon in the fashion world for the second generation of rich people to come up with hundreds of millions of their own, the vast majority of fledgling students still have to turn to investors for help.

Invest money in fashion industry to support emerging brand At the earliest, it was dominated by various professional leading companies, and there were also many angel investors. In recent years, the more mature European and American fashion industry has also witnessed that technology companies have become the main force of investing in start-up brands.

However, this situation has changed recently: Kering, a fashion group with Gucci, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney and other top brands, as well as Nordstorm, ASOS and other relatively civilian clothing enterprises, and even the beauty brand Sephora, have all joined the ranks of supporting start-up brands.

　 Have these fashion giants "found their conscience"?

Although the fashion group's current mode of investing in start-ups is not very different from that of investors in the technology industry, according to the interpretation of current fashion industry insiders, their motivation is not as good or harmless as that reflected in the PR publicity.

Take the largest Kaiyun Group as an example. In April this year, it just announced to cooperate with a global innovation platform called Plug and Play and launched the fashion entrepreneurship accelerator project "Fashion for Good”。 Through this project, Kaiyun will cooperate with 12 fabric design start-ups to provide them with support in technology, design and business model within three months.

Among all the fashion enterprises that invest in supporting emerging designers, Kaiyun is the most outspoken one to their own purposes: to find the latest design ideas that Kaiyun's brands may not be able to bring out in a short time more quickly, and to commercialize these ideas quickly through the resources within the group, becoming a magic weapon to make money.

Kaiyun Group announced 12 fabric design start-ups to be funded through the official website on April 13

Marie Claire Daveu, director of sustainable development of Kaiyun Group The Good Entrepreneurial Accelerator project explains as follows: "We cannot develop alone, and it is difficult to further expand through the existing business model. This cooperation is one of our many solutions, and will ensure our sustainable development ambition by finding revolutionary ideas."

Beauty giant L'Oreal also started running similar projects last year Factory cooperates to provide joint capital injection to five beauty start-ups, and provides assistance in commercial development and product promotion.

In addition, Yoox, which has cooperated with Vogue Italia to fund e-fashion start-ups, and Kate Spade, which has just been acquired by Coach, are also launching incubator projects &Company, Nordstorm, Tory Burch, etc.

Tory Burch (the first from the left) and three designers sponsored by it jointly appeared on the inside page blockbuster of American Vogue in January this year

It sounds quite positive, but Ms. Kayun Daveu's statement reveals the common problem of large fashion groups at this stage: creative capacity is seriously unable to keep up with the demand for commercial expansion.

Sarah, senior editor of WGSN's digital media and marketing department Owen said: "For fashion enterprises, developing incubator projects is very important to promote innovation. In most cases, these brands are increasingly poor in resources, and they can not even create a new silhouette. Just at the moment, young start-up designers need to expand their influence, so their cooperation came into being."

This is also why fashion tycoons' financing for start-ups is not far from that of science and technology enterprises, even if they cooperate with them, but the purpose is very different: to commercialize new ideas more quickly.

This is actually a double-edged sword for emerging designers.

On the one hand, as analyzed by foreign media, start-up brands need financial and technical support, as well as the resources and exposure that big brands and enterprises can provide. Although the purpose of the other party is essentially self serving, as long as it can meet the original purpose of desirability, it is also a willingness to fight one by one.

On the other hand, such rapid commercialization of creativity still poses a danger of "hurting Zhongyong" for designers who have just left school. Once their focus shifts from design to commercial interests too early, it is difficult to ensure that they can continue to produce so-called "revolutionary" new ideas. If the final utilization value is drained, large enterprises can still stand, and independent designers will be difficult to make a comeback.

In this view, perhaps the fashion tycoon's act of providing financial support for start-ups is much better than the previous acquisition mode. When chatting with friends recently, I heard that a Chinese independent designer who graduated from London University of the Arts had to resign all interns due to the jumbled management model after being acquired by a domestic enterprise (who recently purchased various brands overseas without naming names) All designs can only be completed by yourself. At least the incubator mode can avoid such problems to some extent.

However, independent designers should think twice before "taking money".

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