Tag Archives: Buyer (fashion)

What is Fashion Marketing & Management?

Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani, the man touted to be both a brilliant designer & businessman.

For the last 3 years I’ve been studying Fashion Marketing and Management in LASALLE College of the Arts, under the degree title BA(Hons) Fashion Media & Industries.

When people ask me about what I study and I reply “Fashion Management (sometimes adding & Marketing)”.

They will almost always react with a “Wow! ?!”

And followed by, “So what is that?” or “What exactly do you study?”

Well, so my blog post today is to answer and clarify what Fashion Management and Marketing Studies is exactly! This way, you also have a better idea of what I have been doing for the last 3 years and where my skills, knowledge and specialization lies. 🙂

Usually I will answer in a nutshell that Fashion Management & Marketing is the basically Business Marketing studies but specific to the Fashion industry and we also study Fashion theories, history, trends, creative direction and graphic design.

But to be more specific, the modules I have taken in the last three years include:

Marketing,
Advertising,
Cultural and Contextual Studies in Fashion (Fashion theories, history, academic research and writing),
Branding,
Integrated Marketing Communications,
Visualization and Presentation (both digital and traditional, i.e. drawing by hand, softwares like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign),
Finance (Budgeting, Financial Proposals)
Visual Merchandising,
Entrepreneurship,
Project Management,
Product Development,
Fashion Retail,
International Fashion Marketing
& Studio for putting our soft skills & knowledge into practical proposals such as Concept stores and Brands.

It is tough to define what Fashion Management and Marketing is exactly, but I have googled and found two pretty decent answers:

Fashion management is the promotion of apparel sales and involves all of the tasks necessary to deliver the clothing requests and meet the needs of potential customers and designers. Developing campaigns, displays and advertisements, directing manufacturing and marketing, and creating sales strategies are the various parts of Fashion management. Credits here.

Fashion marketing is much the same as product marketing. Integrating brand into the product is something always popular in the fashion world for many popular retail fashion wares. Basically fashion marketing is marketing to either fashion conscious consumers or to distribution channels such as retail franchises and so forth. Credits here.

So you may ask, why did I decide to study something as specific as Fashion Marketing and Management?

The reasons are simple, I love Fashion and I discovered after JC (Junior College) that I was more interested in the Business of Fashion rather than design. Also I really love branding, design and marketing. Also back then, after JC, I thought I wanted to be a Fashion Buyer. But over the last four years I have changed my mind.

I am not exactly sure yet what I am going to do or be in the near and distant future, if it will be directly related to Fashion or not, but I am quite sure that the skills and knowledge that I have picked up over the last 3 years will still be relevant wherever I may be.

You may also ask, so what are the Career prospects of Fashion Marketing and Management studies?

The typical ones will be, but not limited to:

Retail Manager
Stylist
Visual Merchandiser
Fashion Buyer
Public Relations Manager
Human Resource Manager
Production Manager
Fashion Journalist
Entrepreneur of Fashion Brand/Label/Marketing firm/Fashion related business

So now that you have a better idea of what Fashion Management and Marketing is, you might wanna check out the works I’ve done in Year 2, from August 2011-April 2012:

Reports:

Retail Scene for Concept Store in Singapore
Fashion Essay: Define Radical Fashion. Case Studies Alexander McQueen & Azzedine Alaia
Group Branding Proposal for Multi-label Concept Store Biaten
Proposed Branding Creative Brief for Accessories Brand Allure
Fashion Critical / Literature Review on Sustainable Fashion 
Group Project Comparing & Constrasting 3 Departmental Stores in Singapore

Slides:

That’s all! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!

x

Ena