It has been crazy hectic over the last week since my last post. I’ve been extremely busy working on the planning for our presence at the upcoming MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas, August 28 to the 31st.
On Saturday, I’ll be on Jet Blue with my homie, Fresnel aka Madsol Desar, headed to what is considered one of the largest fashion retail trade shows in the country. In the spring, I walked the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center as a first-timer during the Fall show to get a feel for how business is transacted and to do a bit of networking with top brands.
What I took away from my first foray into the world of retail fashion is that it was important for Entertainment Media Works to have a StarStyle.com presence at the event in August. It seems as if there’s been this focus on music and fashion over the last few months, especially with the heavily promoted Fashion Rocks event taking place on Septemeber 7 at Radio City Music Hall.
Sponsored by Conde Nast, Cingular and others (maybe you’ve seen the Fashion Rocks ads in all Conde Nast publications), like GQ and Glamour, as well as the Fashion Rocks magazine that arrived in mailboxes with Conde Nast publications over the last few weeks. There’s also been a column in Rolling Stone, I think every third or fourth week, that takes a look at music and fashion.
Of course, music and fashion are intextricably linked, but oddly their world’s collide infrequently in the public realm. There are probably all sorts of reason’s fasion mags and record labels are starting to develop co-marketing partnerships, but I won’t get into that here. I’m just glad it’s beginning to happen with frequency, that’s all.
As more music videos contain products chosen by celebrity stylists or paid for placements by major urban brands, at StarStyle, we anticipated a demand and have proven it exists. With broadband adoption rates climbing, the dynamics of how people learn about new fashions is changing overnight. Both the fashion and music industry will be forced to change and adapt to new consumer purchasing demands.
That being said, my colleagues at EMW and I set forth to put the wheels in motion by organizing a presence at the event. We brought in a fashion retail marketing expert, Sandra Mihalenko, who helped us to shape our message and create a booth where we’ll showcase EMW’s product’s including StarStyle.com and TheLookBook.
I’m looking forward to the event. It’ll be my second time in Vegas and I’m hoping that we accomplish the goal we’ve set for ourselves, which is to show the fashion community how StarStyle is changing the dynamic by allowing people to buy what they see in tv, film and music video, while our LookBook product begins to shape the fashion product integration dynamic for years to come.
I’ll be back in the Big Apple over Labor Day, but then it’s right back out to Billboard R&B and Hip Hop in Atlanta, and then onto Nashville for more meetings. Lot’s of travel! Should be exciting.
I really, really wanted to check out the Billboard Dandce Music summit, but unfortunately it falls the week after Billboard R&B and Hip Hop and I just can’t stay away from the office for three weeks in a row.
I’m off, but will be checking in here periodically with photos and text to keep you all informed.
