November was a feverish month for commerce and e-commerce discussions in Berlin. Three large conferences took place there last month. Parallel to the 1st Annual European E-commerce Congress (see video interviews with Jana Eggers from Spreadshirt and Nick Lansley from Tesco.com), the large high-end labels met at the “Luxury Conference” (GE/EN) of the International Herald Tribune. In contrast, at the German Trade Conference the internet played a rather minor role.
At the European E-commerce Congress 2009, Exciting Commerce’s Jochen Krisch had the opportunity to moderate the fashion track of the textile industry category. Interesting insights from young fashion start-ups and manufacturers were to be found from the likes of Styleshake, 7Trends, Yalook, Falke/Burlington and Smatch:
- Iris Ben Davis allows her female customers at Styleshake to put together their clothes component-wise. Some wedding parties dress their bridesmaids via Styleshake.
- Martin Meinrenken from Yalook introduced their YaMag concept for the first time at the conference in Berlin. The concept, which should supplement the Fashion Report, will be launched this month and is a mix of traditional magazine and user driven elements.
- Jochen Heemann (7Trends) described the online market segment for fashion and explained how 7Trends wants to position themselves within it:
- Michael Risse (Falke) announced their online shop from Burlington. The new spin-off from Falke will start off newly positioned in the next year.
- Björn Schäfers from Smatch described why he feels that even today, mobile commerce is overrated.
More on the German fashion industry can be found in the German language portal Textilwirtschaft (GE/EN).
This year the topic of fashion popped up in a couple of places: at the Fashion Commerce Forum in Hamburg (see “The Transformation of the Fashion Industry”) as well as at the Social Commerce Forum, where the main focus also lay with fashion and lifestyle.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
