Don’t blame the internet

There is a magazine sent to me called Bridal Buyer. It is the bridal wear industry, (for it is an industry) mouthpiece. It is a confusing title because it is produced by the exhibition company (Ocean Media) that runs the UK bridal trade shows & UK consumer shows.

If you organise trade shows you want, I presume, lots of exhibitors & those exhibitors want lots of trade buyers. I guess for a number of years Ocean Media succeeded in this.

In the current issue there are great articles by competitors & peers focusing on the bride. What the bride wants, how she shops, what she is loving & tackling the more difficult side of our day-to-day experience like the phenomena of ‘selfies’ & ‘showrooming.’ ‘These articles are written by dynamic, motivated, intelligent retailers whose shops represent a broad spectrum of the British public.

Then there are the articles from the ‘trade’. A suggested ‘to-do’ list whilst on a buying trip to London which included dinner at The Ivy followed by dancing at Mahiki had me roaring with laughter. I am imagining the BiS disco crowd moved to W1.

Then was the more irritating articles, those about counterfeit goods & protecting ‘intellectual property’. Running campaigns called Brides Beware, the BBSA make themselves look and sound, at best, misinformed. All brides know, as I do, when you buy a Louis Vuitton bag off a man on the beach it is likely not to be the real thing. Ditto, the internet. Brides already know this. What these labels fail to take into account is that products that have cachet, have originality & desirability. No one that really wants a Mulberry handbag is going to be happy with a fake. I have bought a Mulberry – you get a soft branded PE kit bag to keep it in, an equally fabulous printed bag, the guilty pleasure of the spend and the bragging rights.

In short, if you have created a desirable brand, such as Jenny Packham,  brides that want them that can’t afford them look for sample sales & once worn dresses. They do not look for copies. #fact ( that’s an internet thing the hashtag)

My word to the gigantic manufacturers is this. If you are calling for protection of a ‘fashion designers intellectual property’ I suggest you focus less on diffusion brands and more on your core brand and it’s desirability. Asking for VAT relief on luxury products? Really? When George Osborne is threatening £25 billion of cuts still to the benefits system?

There is a massive difference from counterfeit companies buying a handbag or going to a Vera Wang store and knocking out cheap copies & versions of generic wedding dresses that are, arguably, already copies of someone else’s work. I looked at a couple of websites. On the site from the author of the most frantic article I could find no distinguishing features between their dresses and a hundred other brands.

I understand your businesses are hurting. This is because

• your dresses and brands are not fashionable & desirable
• the UK trade shows have been eclipsed by New York & Barcelona
• you & your members have diluted your brands by creating diffusion labels to grab market share when there is no market growth.
• you  no longer understand vast swathes of the end-user – the bride. Read blogs see what ‘budget brides’ are wearing. Cool fashionable dresses…

Abi Neill makes a very interesting point when she says brides are becoming ‘braver’. They always were. When I used to buy 20 years ago the choice on offer was fabulous. Dozens of great British made labels, great manufactured labels. Ronald Joyce looked utterly different from Benjamin Roberts and Alfred Angelo looked different again. Colour, sleeves, varying necklines – anything was allowed. I still keep a 20 year old magazine to remind myself why I loved buying bridal.

Jan Feb 1995

This was before market saturation, before BBEH became too expensive for small labels, before every label had a couple of side labels to get round their area exclusivity deals and before new shops opened with brands the rest of us established shops wouldn’t touch.

A word to the trade. You can blame the internet, you can blame counterfeiters but I would have a word with yourselves first.

Emma

Emma Meek, MD of Miss Bush Bridalwear
Miss Bush Bridalwear is Surrey’s leading designer bridal shop