Looks from Symetria’s current range. Images supplied.
Global contemporary fashion network, NOT JUST A LABEL (NJAL), launched an exciting retail marketplace today featuring 500 designers including New Zealand brands Taylor and Symetria designed by Vicki Taylor. There are currently over 40,000 independent and emerging designers on NJAL’s website but these first 500 will be part of the international marketplace connecting consumers directly with brands.
The aim is to provide a unique shopping experience in the luxury space with the marketplace showcasing designs that underline the current trend in fashion: discover and purchase one-of-a-kind pieces. Connecting designers to shoppers essentially cuts out the middleman and enables them to find each other in a convenient way on a purpose built platform. In our current global environment it makes sense to focus on online channels that can drive sales when bricks-and-mortar retail is still suffering in many countries.
“NJAL is unique and has a defensible right to win, by providing a solution to an outdated ecosystem,” says Stefan Siegel, Founder and CEO of NJAL. “Allowing our pool of designers to sell direct to the consumer is the future to fashion design, to commerce, to trade shows, to fashion weeks, to unsustainable practises. We are the future of fashion…?”
NJAL had successfully built a brilliant B2B platform but they needed a different approach for this new B2C platform. It was created in partnership with Techsembly, a Singapore based technology company that worked with the NJAL team to build a global market-place infrastructure in order to fill the current online gap in the luxury market.
“The retail industry is at an inflection point and we are increasingly seeing the emergence of new players who are changing the rules of the game,” says Amy Read, Co-Founder and CEO of Techsembly. “NJAL has built an incredible community of creatives whose designs are both inspirational and genuinely unique. This pivot from B2B to a B2C community driven marketplace, which has taken place in little under six weeks, will revolutionise the global fashion industry as we know it.”
For Taylor and Symetria it’s an exciting opportunity to get their contemporary collections in front of a huge global audience. They have been successfully trading on popular online store Farfetch for a while and just recently launched in prestige department store Selfridges in the UK. This new platform opens the brands up to an even wider audience and it’s something designer Vicki Taylor is particularly excited about.
“We are lucky enough to have been selected in the first 500 brands from the 40,000 that currently are on Not Just a Label to launch this revolution in fashion retail,” says Vicki Taylor. “Both our Taylor and Symetria brands have been selected and to our knowledge we are the only NZ brands selected for this.”
“The aim of this new B2C platform is bringing the top emerging and pioneering fashion design brands across all design disciplines direct to the public – rather than designers needing to go through the expensive international fashion journey through fashion weeks and showrooms and selected stockists.”
The fashion system was long overdue for substantial change and this year brings the opportunity to reset and rethink it which makes NJAL’s take on the retail revolution another step in the right direction.
Looks from Taylor’s current range
Images supplied.