Tech IT Easy » fashion

Random thoughts on: Men's vs. Women's fashion statements, 'Virtual' Offices, and (corporate) Centres of Knowledge

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:24:30 +0000

We’ll be migrating Tech IT Easy from wordpress.com to a self-hosted solution these coming days, so I won’t be posting much, I don’t think. In the mean time, here are a few things flying through my head.

Men can’t get away with this !!

Jason Kottke pointed me towards an anti-fashion-industry trend lead by some women: the wearing-one-dress-slightly-altered-day-in-day-out-trend. Somewhat jealous, because it seems so efficient (and thus manly), but I don’t think men can get away with doing something like that, do you? Then again, men also don’t look quite as attractive…

Factors influencing the ‘virtual office’

I’ve heard several stories of entrepreneurs setting up their companies that they can operate it independently from a location, and if you’ve read some of my posts on “designing companies” and mobility, you know that I feel very strongly about doing something similar. In VAT-law, there’s the rule that you can’t locate your VAT-payments to a VAT-friendly country if you’re doing significant business in the VAT-unfriendly country. I’m guessing it’s quite similar with virtual offices. If your business activities tie you to a particular location, than that is a ‘tax’ that you have to pay.

Since there are plenty of smart tax-lawyers around who know their way around the loop-holes, perhaps it’s time for some ‘expert-consultants’ that help entrepreneurs become location-free?? The 4-hour workweek guy comes to mind.

On building (corporate) Knowledge Centres

I grew up in a library, one which my father built, so I may have a different perspective from people growing up in the more digital, paper-free world. But, to me, libraries are magical and comforting. One of the first things I did, moving to Luxembourg, was to move many of my books here (with more on the way) and asking my boss whether we can set up a library.

More broadly, a library to me stands for building and storing knowledge, whether for individuals or groups, and is a source of creativity, innovation, and also trust. Large consultancies are most famous for doing such things and if you saw the virtual universities some of them have train their staff, you’d be amazed.

No great point to this story, except that I hope that as an entrepreneur/manager/CEO you’ll also consider how to improve the lives of your employees sometimes, as well as consider that your company, which is essentially a living organism, will only benefit from having more knowledge inside of it.

On that philosophical note, I.. am.. out.

Vincent

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A dream about electronic clothing

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:46:18 +0000

It feels strange to start 2009 with a dream, but a new year means doing new things and this one felt right. I sometimes have some pretty strange dreams and find it worthwhile to write it down. I don’t quite have notebook lying next to my bed, but close enough. This one was strange too, much stranger than what I’m about to tell you.

In my dream I was looking for a Christmas gift for my brother, a T-shirt actually. For some reason, I imagined that I entered some sort of electronic boutique to do it, I went to pick a shirt, and went to try it out (my brother and me are pretty much the same size).

So there I was in the changing room when I noticed some sort of display on my shirt. It gave me all kinds of options, many of which I can no longer remember, but basically they were something like:

“Do you want to see the news when eating breakfast?”

“Do you want me to operate as a timer when brushing your teeth?”

“Do you want to see traffic information when driving to work?”

You get the idea.

I then had another dream within my dream, which was about imagining other applications, like:

You’re listening to the radio and the thing suggests Wikipedia entries related to the topic.
You’re doing exercise, and it suggests other related ones, with instructions.
You put it on and it sends out a signal to other clothes that match and they start beeping.

And then I woke up, good morning and happy new year, guys!

Ignoring some inconsistencies, like where the display could be on a short-sleeved T-shirt, whether it’s not a little unnecessary for it to display traffic information or a timer when brushing, if those technologies already exist in cars and electronic brushes, and some others, this is the way I imagine it, let’s call it e-clothing, to work:

It has a wireless connection, which enables it to talk to other devices (including clothes.)
It has an accelerometer, which senses things like you brushing or doing exercise.
It can be programmed, manipulated within or remotely, to become relevant to your context.
It takes on the colour of your clothing when it’s dormant.
It also has no problem being folded, etc., so it’s like e-paper or better, like e-cloth.

That’s all for now. I would personally love for electronics to be part of our everyday clothing, it makes a lot of sense when thinking about exercising-contexts, where other devices are cumbersome, and for finding matching clothes (hell for some).

Hope you had a happy new year celebration!

Vincent

The attraction of (online) fashion

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:14:46 +0000

Hot chicks, of course! What else can I say, as a guy? And really, I always wanted to start a blogpost with “Hot chicks!” No, truth be told, I’ve been looking at fashion for some time, during the writing of my, now retired, food and retail blog, and a little afterwards too. As I mentioned before, industry-research is an important part of my job-application process, online, preferably on location at similar businesses, and through my conversations with the management. I’ve visited a number of fashion-retailers also, Zara and a more very upper-class fashion-retailer, and had some thoughts about it, which I’ll share here.

Zara & H&M

Two of my “business-heroes” in this industry are Zara and H&M, who have dramatically different organisational structures, but similar objectives, and a very strong technological foundation for managing their logistical complexities, which also helped them in their online strategy, I imagine.

If fashion can be characterised by anything, it’s that intellectual property doesn’t matter. Rather it’s the company that combines creative (or creatively copied) designs together with a strong execution (across the value chain) that wins the game. Zara, a vertically and horizontally integrated fortress, is strong in constantly renewing its collections (and hardly does any marketing), while H&M, a company that’s similar to Nike or Apple, only really does the designing and the marketing, while outsourcing pretty much everything else.

You can read a few more thoughts about these two on my retail-blog.

The online fashion-game

When you think about it, a store doesn’t have to be that different from a commerce-website; you have the enticing outside part of things, which can be marketing and the shopping window, and you have the interactive inside part, which encourages you to mix and match, try and (impulse) buy. A good website will understand (or learn) the way customers think and appeal to the right drivers from the marketing and the interactive part of things.

Fashion is however a somewhat complex consumer-good. The way a piece of clothing is judged (based on my opinion) is on three levels:

The visual: how does it look?
The sensory: how does it feel?
and The social: what reaction do I get?

The web is getting more creative every day about the visual, e.g. you have sites like Etsy that use elaborate colour-matching techniques, of which there are several different versions elsewhere.

On the sensory-side, this should kind of be approached like you’re convincing a very sceptical person of a risky project. Everybody has been burned by some bad-fitting clothes before! On the one hand, extensive information matters, e.g. Styleshake’s size guide. On the other hand, support matters very much, e.g. Zappos‘ customer service approach, which Fidji wrote about before.

The social dimension should be something that the web is good for. On the one hand, celebrity-marketing like H&M and many other stores do, is a good enticement to get people to buy your clothes. On the other hand, what matters more to people like me is what clothes will look like in my social circle, and not everybody has Tom Cruise’s body-type (I’m twice as tall ). But you can definitely imagine a Hotornot- or Facebook-styled fashion-store, with some creative techniques.

To summarise

The attraction of fashion is still the hot models for me, but really, in the online domain it’s much more.

Fashion is a global and dynamic industry, and technology is definitely an enabler in that business.
The lack of IP makes the industry a somewhat easy one to enter, but also requires very strong executive skills.
There is still plenty of smart innovation left in addressing the right visual, sensory, and social needs of customers.

From a job-perspective, I found out that the fashion-business is not that easy to get into. You need either a related degree and/or (preferably together) relevant experience. That said, if you got a fashion-business or are thinking of starting one, preferably online, and are in need of a creative business-guy, give me a buzz! I’m always up for some brainstorming!

For the commentators:

what do you think are the drivers for fashion shopping?
What innovative e-commerce sites have you come across?
Where do you see fashion going, hybrid, more off-line, or more online?

Vincent

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