The Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iasi, ROMANIA Faculty of Textiles, Leather and Industrial management

THE ROLE OF PERSONAL BRANDING IN FASHION MARKETING

Mentor : Dr. Florin Alexandru Luca

Iasi, 15th December 2011.

Assembled by : Zoran Jakuc

Contents :

I.

Introduction 1.1 What is fashion? 1.2 What is marketing? 1.3 Concept of fashion marketing

II.

Analysis of the subject 2.1 Brand 2.2 Marketing Environment 2.3 Advertising 2.4 Sales promotion 2.5 Public relations 2.6 Image 2.7 SWOT analysis Information about modeling agency EVOLUTION 3.1 History of the company 3.2 Evolution media Ltd. Topic area with circumscribe of the subject 4.1 Business partners 4.2 Projects and future plans Conclusion Personal conclusion Inventory of authors and ideas

III.

IV.

V. VI. VII.

I.

Introduction
1.1. What is fashion? The textile and clothing industry is one of the largest industrial processing branches in the world. Fashion predominates in the clothing industry, which it makes specifically and constantly influenced by the culture of the fashion. Design and trade marks represent intangible assets. Fashion is a part of the culture, which adjust trends and affects of demand, design of the product and sales in clothing and textile industry. Fashion can be defined as a product of class division, which connects people of same class, and at the same time encloses them from the one who dont belong to the same class.

1.2. What is marketing? Marketing is a business philosophy or way of thinking about the firm from the perspective of the customer or the potential customer. Marketing is a management process concerned with anticipating , identifying and satisfying customer needs in order to meet the long term goals of the organisation.

1.3. Fashion marketing concept Fashion marketing is the application of a range of techniques and a business philosophy that centres upon a customer and potential customer of clothing and clothing-related products and services, in order to meet the long-term goals of the organisations. There is a another way to view the relationship between marketing and design, and this is termed the fashion marketing concept. The idea of that good fashion design only requires sufficient promotion to succeed is only applicable to very limited number of businesses, usually those producing expensive garments for an elite market.

Model of interrelationship of fashion design and marketing can be seen in the table 1.

Table 1. The fashion marketing concept. Source: M.Easy, Fashion marketing

High

Design centred

Fashion marketing concept

Concern for fashion design

Failure Low

Marketing centred

Low Concern for customers and profits

High

In the Table 1. It can be seen that low concern for customers, profit and design leads to failure. This occurs as a consequence of over estimating design ability whilst disregarding customers preferences and the need of the profit.

II. Analysis of the subject

For understanding marketing and fashion marketing, and the role of branding in fashion marketing, we have to define some of the most important terms and definitions, used in fashion marketing.

2.1. Brand The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers." A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity it affects the personality of a product, company or service. It is defined by a perception, good or bad, that your customers or prospects have about you, or the company.

2.2. Marketing Enviroment Fashion is ultimately about change. Every season there are new fashions that lead to obsolescenes of last year's clothes. Many of these changes are brought about by designers trying to create something new to satisfy customers, but others are because of influences beyond the control of manufacturers or designers. These are all gathered together in what is called the marketing enviroment.

2.3. Advertising Any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by any identified sponsor . The pages of professional magazines are common avenues for advertising information related to a firm's products. It is mainly used to build up the awareness of the brand's exitence, keeping the clients' minds that product is availble on the market.

2.4. Sales Promotion Short-term incetives to encourage the trial of purchase of a product or service, such as discounts.

2.5. Public relations and publicity Progarmms designed to promote and/or protect company's image, or those of its products, including product literature, exhibitions and articles about organisation's product in professional or even in a consumer pubilcations.

2.6. Image The general idea that the public has of a product, brand or company.

2.7. SWOT analysis SWOT analysis is a method of developing a marketing strategy based on assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the company and the opportunities and threats in the market.

III.

MODELING AGENCY EVOLUTION

3.1 History of the company

The Modelling agency Evolution is established in 2008. by few young enthusiastic young people, who found fashion as a way of living. At the beginning, Evolution was an association, which was gathering the young people, with just one thing in common, love for fashion. The leaders of the association were two brothers, Predrag and Danijel Brkljac. At the beginning, Evolution started to organise some small presentations and promotions in a way of organising fashion shows, designer promotions, and modelling schools. Since the number of members grow, the need for more space, and for bigger projects was a logical solution. In the 2009. Evolution association opened a company Evoluion Media Ltd. which is a small business company, whit one goal, to promote young designers and present their work to publicity.

3.2 Evolution Media Ltd.

After a one year of activity of Evolution association, the next step was Evolution media Ltd. which is a company start-service organization of events, fashion shows and fashion activities of agencies, organizations, campaigns and advertising services. Evolution Media as a young company wants to be inventive in their offer. Northwest Croatian fashion industry is becoming one of the major branches with a tendency of growth. It is becoming increasingly interesting for both domestic and foreign clients. The target groups individually and request access to the unique service. Therefore, the Evolution Media in cooperation with partners, tourism board and the city of Varazdin, Varazdin county, and other entities engaged in similar business segment, through a variety of shows and events in your organization, offering interesting and specific arrangements to make this branch of economy is closer to the ordinary, little people, and thus the prospect of future business. Therefore, the role of branding, at the fashion market was very important, because the situation in Croatia, in textile industry is pretty bad at the moment. Evolution is now a small business company, which has a modeling school leaded by Zoran Jakuc an ex model, and a student of Faculty of Textile technology in Varazdin, who was a model for six years. There young people can learn how to became a model, by learning the main bases of walking, posing, and get a lot of presentations of many guests as hair stylists, make up artists, actors, fitness trainers, photographers etc.

IV.

TOPIC AREA WITH CIRCUMSCRIBE OF THE SUBJECT

4.1 Business partners

Based on the activities of the company, company selected few resident business partners, who are participating every project that company organize. Since the main goal, are the fashion shows, which approved to be most effective way of presentation, some of companys resident partners are : Barok Ltd. hair salon, Sanja Sajko make up artist, Fitness studio Varazdin, Getzzy photo studio, BROTH Ltd. fashion designer, Kuzminski Design fashion designer. One of the very important things to mention, is cooperation with the Faculty of textile technology in Varazdin, which is the only faculty in Croatia which educate students to became a fashion designer, where company find possible clients.

4.2 Projects and future plans The company already established few big projects which are running every year at the same time, and these are : Night of Evolution, Energy of Evolution and Fashion Walking, which every year are bigger and more visited by public, which showed big interest in projects like those. All the young designers who are coming from the Faculty of Textile technology arent paying any fee to participate at the shows, because that is the main goal of the company, promote young designer who dont have opportunity to present their work, or company helps them to became a brand, recognizable in the country, introduce them to fashion market and at the end, to help them sell their collections. All projects are financial covered by other brand designers, and companies which participate at the projects. The company is one ifs kind in area, but the plans to expand to other area is a goal to fulfil in next period. The company now, is working with budget that gets from the projects, so the leading people of the company are paid by the project. Today, Evolution is a brand, with its image, which describes a company of young enthusiastic people, already famous fashion projects, known in local area and wider. At the moment there is no concurrence, or at last not that successful as Evolution.

V.

CONCULSION

The advertising is one of the most important instruments of marketing communications, in the clothing and fashion industry. Also important are personal selling and sales promotion and public relations. However, Croatian clothing companies dont have enough their own brand names to be able to use promotion in their domestic and foreign markets. It is approved that advertising and personal branding are one of the most important communications in Croatia. We can conclude that that companies can use various marketing communications instruments effectively. However, the key success factor for companies and fashion designers in the clothing industry is developing and implementing their own brand.

VI.

PERSONAL CONCLUSION

Croatian textile and clothing industry is currently going through a period of change. Slowly starting to manufacturing our own products. For this change it takes more time. At the same time, globalization and the continual arrival of a growing number of competitors in the Croatian market, aggravate the existing situation (especially cheap imports from China). Companies that have their own production and develop brand achieve greater profits. The problem is that no brand of the leading Croatian companies, viewed in the wider surrounding, are not sufficiently known. Based on the past experience, it can be concluded that the Croatian textile industries are currently under-used marketing. In the future, the role of brands and brand management in the textile industry is going to grow. Increase in importance and management of them in the world trend, and if Croatian textile industry wants to survive in the market and compete with a growing number of brands present on the market, they will have to seriously start to follow trends, because without a strong and recognizable brand name is not likely to survive in the market. Companies should increase investment in building a positive image of companies and recognizable brands in order to ensure their place in the minds of consumers. And it also means progress for the modeling agency Evolution Media Ltd. as well.

VII.

Inventory of authors and ideas

1. Philip Kotler, Waldemar Pfoertsch : B2B Brand management, Springer Berlin, 2006. Germany 2. Mike Easy : Fashion Marketing, third edition, 2009.

3. Bruno Zavrsnik : The use of Marketing Communications in Clothing Industry in Slovenia, 2007. 4. Alica Grilec Kauric : Fashion Marketing in textile and clothing industry in Croatia, 2009. 5. A. Ivanovic : Dictionary of marketing, third edition, Bloomsbury 2003. 6. Wikipedia

7. Internet