Concentrated in just one edition in the summer coinciding with the Mobile World Festival
The Brandery reinvents itself as a fashion and trends festival targeting end clients
The Brandery, urban fashion show, is changing format and becoming a platform for trends, experiences, leisure and fun so that brands can have more direct contact with their clients. The event, targeting end consumers exclusively will be held as one edition in September 2013 in Fira de Barcelona’s Montjuïc exhibition centre.
The show is evolving and adapting to the new dynamics of the fashion market, where online sales are growing more and more, in which brands need to be able to transmit their values to end consumers. In this sense, the event is conceived as a setting for brands and their clients to network through different fashion-related musical, sports and leisure activities.
“Fashion labels”, explains Miquel Serrano, the show’s director, “are adapting to the new conditions of a market that is increasingly dynamic in new sales channels. In this context, the brands concur with us that we have to opt for an event understood as a marketing tool, which allows leading firms to communicate with their clients in a young, creative and stimulating setting”.
The event, which will take place from September 13th to 15th, will feature the exhibits of a maximum of ten leading brands that, together with Fira, will define the activities and proposals organised for visitors.
The new Brandery that, at the last editions, combined exhibits for professionals with proposals for the general public, will form part of the different activities of the Mobile World Festival, the event that Mobile World Capital Barcelona is designing in order to involve people in the use of mobile technologies in fields such as leisure, shopping, sports and music, among others.
A constantly evolving market
Fashion is still a business, but the way in which clothes reach consumers’ wardrobes is changing rapidly, forcing firms to completely redesign their business models. In just 8 years, the market share of multi-brand shops has dropped 16 points, from 38.6% in 2003 to 22.9% in 2011. This change is due partly to the fast rise in online sales, which last year totalled 353.5 million Euros, 71.8% more than the previous year, in addition to 42.9 million in online footwear sales (+36.6%).
“Clothing is the fifth most sold product online; multi-brand retailing is losing out to brand stores, online shopping and outlets. In this climate, brands need different sales tools”, thinks Serrano. “In digital sales, the only person to make a purchasing decision is the end customer, eliminating intermediaries. For this reason, fashion brands need to differentiate themselves with features and values that make them unique; they need to have established a close link with their public before the purchase”.
Cities like Copenhagen and Sydney are already opting for this type of format, which consists in taking the fashion experience to the streets, focusing on the end client. “Similar international examples show us that there is a tendency to forego classic fashion communication formulas and to mobilise the potential market through experiences”, says Serrano.
Barcelona, 17th December 2012