So a little about me.. I believe life is what you make it and have big dreams. When this opportunity was advertised I jumped at it right away. It ticked many of my boxes: fashion, technology, social media, start-up, New York - tick x 5.

Being a digital native, I can see the value added to an organization through digital media and will be doing my best to get active and increase our online presence. I would also like to publicly thank Cha and the team for giving me this opportunity.

If you're a designer, buyer, or just love fashion with a passion then drop me a line on www.twitter.com/monalisastyle or jonathan@monalisastyle.com.

If you've been reading our blog, you'll know that we are huge advocates of retail hopping on the technology bandwagon, specifically in web based applications.  It doesn't make any sense NOT to.  There was a great article in last week's Womens Wear Daily titled, "Retail's Technological Revolution Takes Off" which clearly defines what cloud computing is, and what the benefits are.

Here are a few noteworthy quotes on the "cloud" -

"Retailers — and, not incidentally, apparel makers and consumers — will get any kind of computing power they need from the “cloud” — which provides an application or service available to anyone at any time as long as they have an Internet connection. Everything will be knitted together by social media and accessible from any mobile device anywhere. Call it the third-wave Web."

"A wide variety of cloud services are already available today, including personal productivity software, enterprise applications and niche software aimed at the apparel industry. The application or service is hosted and available on demand through a Web browser at any time, as long as the user has an Internet connection, and the user’s data is stored remotely by the host. Examples are any Internet-based mail service such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, and Google Docs, which offers free spreadsheets, presentations, word processing and other office tools that can be accessed from anywhere on the fly and shared with anyone simply by typing in the person’s e-mail address. Social software such as YouTube, Twitter and Flickr are other examples."

And, our favorite quote:

"In the apparel world, it’s a cliché that multibillion-dollar businesses run on spreadsheets, and need to upgrade to enterprise software that anyone in the company can view. This is true, but now cloud software as simple as Google Docs or as enterprise-oriented as NetSuite can at least partially solve the problem more quickly and less expensively."

By golly, I think the apparel industry is starting to get it!  (Step 1 of 12)

Now, we just have to get the older generation of buyers and executives to start listening to the recent grads and assistants working in their companies.  (Step 2 of 12)

I'm starting a short blog series called "Crystal Ball" to share my perspectives on fashion and where the industry is heading.  I would love any feedback and comments on my little thought bubbles. 

It was a shock to me when I started my first job out of college in 2007 and learned that clothing brands take orders by... writing them on paper and faxing them!  This was right before the economic meltdown and all that jazz so the contemporary market was hot.  We were placing orders left and right, and re-ordering up the wazoo... and my job was to organize all the paper and call people to confirm orders and shipments and take pictures of all the stuff because we didn't trust the re-touched images that vendors gave us.  It was so bizarre to me that something like shopbop.com could exist, with their 200 something brands, free shipping, and glorious lookbooks- and amazon.com (the parent company of shopbop) with their one-click shipping that they tried to patent in the early days of the internet, infinite order history with little thumbnails, and free two-day shipping.  And yet, I was still working with paper at work.  When I came on board, they had just converted from using Polaroids to digital cameras. Yeah, you heard me.  I bought my first 1.0 megapixel digital camera at least in 2003 (if not before) but they were still using POLAROIDS.... I just don't have any more words to explain the ass backwardness of the fashion world in terms of technology.

Though fashion is creatively forward, it is technologically behind.  In part, this is probably due to the history of the garment district and its dominance by immigrants and dependency on manufacturing.  I can say this because my parents are immigrants and I didn't even become an American citizen until I was 13.  (Both of my parents now text and email.. in broken English).  So now, 10+ years after the internet was invented, and after I max out all of my credit cards to create monalisastyle.com do I see industry people making the connection between the internet and how it can help their sales and evangelize their brand name.  Brands only jumped on the social media/ twitter bandwagon in the last couple of months or so.  Many of them don't even have Facebook Fan Pages.  Heck, brands only started getting feedback from their customers to see what they want and are willing to buy! 

Does it make sense for designers to spend upwards of $100,000 twice a year to put on a 20 minute fashion show during Fashion Week in NYC... especially if you're in your first 2 seasons?  Why not go the forward-thinking and business savvy route as Alexander McQueen has?  Soon after Ralph Lauren't Polo brand announced it would be having an online fashion show, Time Magazine wrote a great article titled, "Will Fashion's Biggest Names Kiss the Runway Goodbye?"  By going virtual, you can show your collection not only to 750 industry insiders and press but also to millions of consumers who might not be able to afford your runway clothing but might buy your line for Target.  Done correctly and on the proper timeline, viewers should even be able to pre-order or order styles right on the same screen that is showing the online fashion show.  I agree with Donna Karan when she says that fashion should be marketed closer to the delivery date rather than 6 months in advance (WWD CEO Summit 2009).  All of the hype dies down by the time the runway styles hit the selling floor.

The older corporate executives probably don't want to hire some Gen Y'er to head up social media because "people don't trust the internet."  This leads to the next post in the Crystal Ball series titled, "demise of department stores for fashion and rise of boutique shops and I can even take that further into the longest running sentence ever to decline of corporations and rise of the freelancers, independents, and the creative class".  The world is resetting itself - what was once big and stable (corporations) no longer are and people are reverting to depending on themselves and community (Etsy.com is a great example of this as are shared office spaces)  Who are the next generation of consumers and employees?  How will the world change?

When I first came up with the idea of Mona Lisa Style, I was afraid of telling others because I thought they would steal my idea.  I think many others feel the same way too.  I would explain my idea in sweepingly general terms and purposely be vague about features, pricing, and target market.  People would listen and feign interest, but I never got any constructive feedback or ideas.  It was when I started being more open about my idea, vision, and business model that I started getting valuable feedback from potential investors, potential customers, and people in the fashion and/or technology industry.  Remember, I started off not knowing what the difference between a programmer and designer was.  I didn't know anything about websites or how to make them.

It seems that when you open things up and ask for collaboration and feedback, as google and many computer programming languages have done, you get a higher quality of involvement and responses.  People form a community around these topics and contribute frequently during their free time, resulting in diversity of perspectives, opinions on how to improve, and awareness.  Remember how AOL Instant Messenger was the first messaging program?  Didn't you find it an inconvenience that you could only talk to your friends if they had an AIM account also?  You weren't able to talk to friends who were using Skype, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN messenger.  You had to talk to Johan on AIM, Carl on MSN, and Sarah on Skype all because each of those companies wanted to make people sign up for their specific service rather than make things convenient for their users.  But now, you can sign into AIM through your google chat account and there are services like Digsby that integrate all of your chats so you can talk to people on different networks just by signing into Digsby.  Or remember when there was no such thing as Facebook Connect?  You would have to create a new account on new websites by typing in the same information.  But now, you can click a button and you're all set to go.  Isn't it so much easier this way?

So why don't fashion companies do the same thing?  Our thinking is that  instead of each brand developing a private wholesale log-in for their buyers and spending tens of thousands of dollars doing it, they can list their styles on Mona Lisa Style.  As I mentioned in my Starts of a Startup post, I realized that each company has it's own full-time person organizing information collected in market.  Instead of doing that, why doesn't everyone just go to one centralized location to find the information?  It's also easier for buyers because instead of logging into 20 different vendor websites, they can now log into Mona Lisa Style and see all of the brands they carry.  They can even comparison shop across brands without leaving the website.  Contemporary brands are pretty young companies.  The oldest one is only about 10 years old at this point and we know times are tough.  So why not pool resources to create something that can make the entire industry more efficient?

My first real job out of college was assistant buyer for a small contemporary store based in New York, NY.  They boutique retailer that sells men's and women's contemporary apparel, shoes, and accessories.  They have 2 locations in New York City and one in the Gansevoort Hotel in Miami.  The buying team consisted of 5 people - 2 buyers, 2 assistant buyers, and 1 GMM.  I was responsible for keeping my buyer organized and making sure she had all of the information she needed to write her orders.  Essentially, I became a semi-profesional photographer (semi because how professional can you really get with a point and shoot digital camera?) as I took pictures of everything she liked in market and circled them on linesheets.  My buyer liked to shop the entire market before placing any orders, so we always placed orders from the office and never at the showroom or tradeshow.  So, it was super important that the pictures she later referenced to place her orders were labelled correctly.  Since one of our categories was denim and practically all denim looks the same on point and shoot digitical camera pictures, mistakes were made.  Linesheets didn't help much with denim either, since every wash is called "indigo" or "carribean" or "moonlight" - I mean I know it's all part of marketing and sales, but buyers who don't work with the line everyday will not know know which washes are what.  So basically, not only did the actual task of labeling the pictures suck, but sometimes she would order the wrong thing because of me (at which point we then played the e-mail blame game).

Then there were also those times she would go to LA Market (which apparently I was too lowly to attend with her - ok the real reason is that it's expensive).  When she got back, there would be something close to a thousand images that needed to be downloaded, labeled, and organized... in 5 days, because orders were due the following week.  The best part was after I finished labeling everything, designers would make changes to prices, colors, fabrication, or delivery windows.  Sometimes they would let us know as soon as these changes were made, but most of the time they would tell us after we submitted the order.  And then we'd take another couple of days to talk through e-mail where the sales rep tries to sell you something you don't want so that the dollar amount rolls up to the same amount as it did with the style they are no longer making.  Funny how fashion is predictable in that sense, isn't it?

So one day, while doing my aggressive walk dodging street vendors from Chinatown to the office, I said to myself, "if my company pays me to do this full-time, then every boutique retailer probably has at least one person just like me doing the same exact thing.  I'm not alone!"  Then I thought, "why doesn't someone just put all of this stuff online? Like an amazon.com but for wholesale fashion" 

Then I became obsessed.  I would go to work everday and think, "if my idea existed, I would be doing way more interesting things like looking for new designers" but instead I continued to label pictures and make order templates and talk to vendors about style/price/delivery changes and follow up on shipments and all of that.  After work, I spent my time researching the concept, sure that something already existed.  Sure, a few things existed, but nothing that quite matched my vision.

So from there, as an English Literature major with no technology background, I began my 10 month journey to create Mona Lisa Style.

At age 12, I was an impressionable adolescent.  Unlike other girls my age, my puritanical mother never taught me how to put on makeup, create stylish outfits, or do my hair.  So naturally, I turned to television and Seventeen magazine to learn why boys didn’t like me, how to wear eyeliner, and how to make my boobs grow bigger.  I soon graduated to Vogue, where the possibilities of big city life to a small town girl like me were endless and glamorous.  But I knew that would never be my life.  I didn’t have the looks, the money, the name, the education, or the personality to live a life like they did in the magazines.  Everyone in Vogue was light years above me. (Don’t worry - I no longer believe this since I am not 12 years old anymore, and have some semblance of self esteem.) They had names like Diane von Furstenburg the third and came from (or married into) royalty.  They vacationed every other week in hoity toity destinations where only the rich go.   They didn’t have to work.  They went to school at exclusive boarding schools before attending college at an ivy.  It was all so cool to me.  I wanted to be those people.  I dreamed of interning at a fashion magazine in New York City so that I could be around the clothes and the people.  It didn’t matter they verbally abused or degraded me as a human being.  It was all worth it in my mind.  No guts, no glory right?  (Ok, that didn’t really happen.  Just in here for dramatic effect.)

Then, things started to happen.  First there was that whole internet thing and people started to buy things online.  In 2000, netaporter.com started selling designer clothing online.  Outrage!  Then, the birth of fast fashion.  H&M opened it’s first store in the United States.  Designer-esque clothes at mass market prices? Fast fashion retailers are able to design, produce, and ship goods in two weeks, door to door.  It takes the rest of the industry 4-6 months.  More outrage!  Everyone started knocking everyone else off.  And there was nothing anyone could do about it since US law doesn’t allow you to protect intellectual property on apparel.  In the mid 2000’s, luxury brand names were branching out into new markets.  They went global.  Then they started making $300 sunglasses, shoes, scarves, jewelry.  Now, anyone who had a couple hundred bucks could own Chanel, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton.  I don’t deny it, I was one of those people who rocked the labels even though I was working at my parents’ Chinese take-out joint for minimum wage.

Then another thing started happening.  Rich and/or famous people were no longer dressing head-to-toe in one designer.  They were now mixing designers, and even mixing price points. Oh my lord! In my mind, Sharon Stone started this phenomenon when she wore a white men’s button down shirt from the Gap with her couture skirt to the 70th Oscars.  Then boutiques such as Scoop NYC, Big Drop NYC, and Intermix popped up and merchandised their clothes no longer by brand but by outfits whereas in department stores, clothes were always merchandised by brand.

Every brand started making all this stuff, and people were eating it all up.  Americans loved it… until they didn’t.  The supply was too much for the demand, and things wouldn’t sell at full price.  Savvy consumers figured out the department store markdown dates (8-10 weeks after delivery) and waited for items to go on sale until buying.  Begin markdown frenzy.  A few years later (2005 ish), after the brand names had saturated those markets, high-end designers who had exclusive distribution deals with retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue started manufacturing diffusion lines and partnering with mass market retailers such as Target, Kohl’s, and Macy’s.  They went from the priciest retailers to the most affordable retailers.  Where were they planning on going next?

Fast forward to the economic collapse of 2008.  All of a sudden, fashion isn’t so exclusive anymore.  Fashionable clothing (ahem, designer knockoffs) are now available for less than $100 at your friendly neighborhood fast-fashion retailer.  Where it was once impossible for normal non-industry and non-connected people who weren’t interning at a fashion PR firm to attend fashion shows at the tents, American Express started selling tickets to the oh so exclusive Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.

When -30% became the new flat in late 2008/2009 and one of the industry’s largest factors, CIT, nearly went bankrupt, something had to be done.  So all the big names in the fashion industry meet up to talk about (where’s the representation from the rest of the industry?) how they can fix this mess.  They basically agree that markdowns are not good for anyone in the industry (except the consumers).  They acknowledge that something must be done about the knocking off.  And then they come up with Fashion’s Night Out. Anna Wintour makes an appearance at Macy’s in Queens.  Retailers and designers band together and agree not to entice shoppers to participate by offering discounts.  Fashion’s Night Out gets a lot of publicity but doesn’t exactly catapult people back into spending money.

And that, brings us to today.

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They say startups die due to lack of cash.  I think established companies die mostly because of lack of reinvention.  Established companies often rest on their laurels and don’t listen to the younger people with fresh perspectives coming into the company.  Upper management often feels that the college grads have no insight and can’t possibly have anything good to say because they haven’t earned their stripes yet.  These kids are straight out of college.  What could they possibly know about business?  Management has been in the business for 30 years doing the same exact thing, so clearly they know what they are doing, right?  To be honest though, in my experience, it is not usually the CEO and Presidents that have this problem.  It’s usually people at the VP level and below, or people who have held the same position for 10+ years.  They feel that they have something to prove.  I think you need a mixture of experienced and new people to make good products/services and run a successful company but i’ll go into that in another post.

Let’s take a closer look at a few cases:

1.  Coach, est. 1941 - I’ll talk about their reinvention because I watched them evolve for about 5 years during my formative youth.  My parents have a store in the town mall, and being forced to close the shop everynight in high school, I would pass by the Coach store.  Coach is 68 years old now and they’re still doing very well because they’ve done an absolutely brilliant job rebranding and targeting a new market.  At the beginning of my high school years, Coach was known as the leather handbag company for older women.  It sat with Dooney & Burke and came in classic leather colors of black, dark brown, brown, and tan.  My middle aged mom would shop there (although she was too cheap to ever pay retail for anything).  Towards the end of high school, I started noticing standalone retail Coach stores and color in the windows.  I haven’t seen the correlating numbers related to the revamped marketing and branding efforts but in today’s WWD, Coach ranked #1 in the list of most competitive retailers.  Coach put out more offerings, at lower price points and playful colors to target a younger market but still have their classic pieces for their longtime customers.  Why did they do it?  Maybe they realized that their customer was aging with them, and senior citizens don’t really shop for themselves anymore.  Or maybe sales sucked.  Probably both. People, things, and times were changing and Coach had to move with the wave or get left behind.

2. Liz Claiborne, est. 1976 - Here’s another “mom brand” that I’ve followed closely throughout my upbringing.  My mom exclusively shopped Liz Claiborne at Macy’s and would stalk items on her daily trips to the mall until they hit the 70% off rack.  She’d even buy things 2-3 sizes too big because she was so frugal.  Anyway, Liz Claiborne has been known as one of the mom brands for most of its 33 years. With the contemporary market rising and squeezing the bridge world, Liz Claiborne made smart strategic acquisitions of contemporary brands Juicy Couture, Kate Spade, and Lucky Brand Jeans in 2007.  They decided to hedge their bets and have a few brands in bridge, better, and now contemporary.  In early 2008, they announced Isaac Mizrahi as the new designer.  He’s there to refreshen the whole drab suits moms wear to work line.  I think it worked.  The new line is fresh, young, vibrant.  Their floor in 34th street looks bright, clean, new.  The brightness of it all really makes the Jones New York section look dark, dingy, and old.  It’s still too early to tell whether these investments will pay out, but I definitely think they made the right moves.  In my opinion, Liz Claiborne listened to the market and reacted but only time will tell..

3. Jones Apparel Group, est. 1975- owns Nine West, Easy Spirit, Evan Piccone, Jones New York, Anne Klein, Anne Klein New York, Rachel by Rachel Roy.  Jones is a direct competitor of Liz Claiborne and sure enough, was founded around the same time.  Like Liz Claiborne, Jones Apparel Group is known as selling “mom work clothes.”  Jones brands sit on department store floors right next to Liz Claiborne brands. Until about 1-2 years ago, their brand and identity was kind of BLAH to me.  They recently moved a new CEO and President of women’s wholesale into place which seems to have loosened things up a little around there.  The president, Aru Kulkarni comes from Liz Claiborne, so maybe things will get a little younger and a new perspective will pan out.  In 2008, they also brought in head designer Ted Kim (from Michael Kors) to design for their Anne Klein New York bridge division.  The line became much more modern and focused but saw pushback from middle american retailers.  The line is now moving back to it’s roots of middle american mom clothing.  Jones Apparel Group’s brands still resonate largely within the bridge world and older customer but in 2008, they did take a 50% stake in Rachel Roy, a designer label.  In 2009 they launched Rachel by Rachel Roy exclusively in Macy’s stores at pricepoints that sit amongst junior clothing.  They have a strong financial team and a decent balance sheet compared to industry standards but it’s still to be seen who takes the larger market share.  They’ve got several brands that need rejuvenation, and it doesn’t seem that it’s likely to happen the way things are currently going.

So, the moral of the story is: reinvention is hard.  It’s difficult to realize when to hold on to what works and when to try new things.  For me, I personally vow to listen to the new people in the company and ask for their opinions and insight.

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I always thought it was little too coincidental for two similar products/services to hit the market at the same time.  What’s the real story here?

Gilt (Nov 2007) vs Hautelook (Nov 2007) vs RueLaLa (Apr 2008)

Big Drop NYC (1990) vs Intermix (1993) vs Scoop (1996)

Vita Coco (May 2004) vs. Zico (2004)

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