Zagreb's first fashion trade show: Fashion.hr Industrija

Long time no blog lovelies. I got to admit I have totally reasonable excuse. I am working on a new project - which is related to fashion and to my creative outlet - my blog. So I did fail to put it all in a blog post form. I will try to catch up fast. 

So, yesterday I skimmed through Fashion.hr Industrija as I went to pick up my gorgeous new dress from Lei Lou booth.

 Fashion.hr Industrija is a local designer trade exhibition, organized first time around this year in Zagreb with intention to give local designer the opportunity to showcase their collections to international buyers. However - there were not many buyers in attendance if any.

The venue itself looked absolutely fabulous, however there were more sponsored booths than designers, many designers were not personally at their booths and those that did showcase, mostly do have their own shops or showrooms, so I did not see much added value for them for being there as there were very little visitors the first day and I don't see how they can financially get to positive zero having to rent the booth space and merchandise it as well as to make a collection for the actual fashion show.

Another setback and potential reason for lack of visitors yesterday was that there was a charge to get in which I think is not wise to do first time around. 

On the other hand, I was quite impressed with the amount of effort and creativity the organizing team put behind the organization. The venue is quit big so I am sure it was hard to merchandise it properly, but they still succeeded in making it quit chic with right dose of technology, fashion, entertainment and designer presentation. 

Secondly, my conclusion exiting the venue on a day one was that the organization team is in terms of capability running far ahead of the local designer’s capacities and kind of educating them as they go forward. 

In ideal world, if there were enough business interest and clear business ethics with common vision among three event organizers, we would see designers from all three events showing their collections on this kind of small local trade show as this would provide more realistic, and more rich picture of local industry - with consequently showing more concrete financial results for all parties involved. Just a thought to ponder upon.

“From small beginnings come great things.”