World class

MANILA, Philippines - Robby Carmona is nervous. The seasoned events director, often seen standing behind his technical booth — dressed in Philippine fashion’s best, no less — is something of a storyteller, leveling up support for the industry through some of the Philippines’ most memorable events. To bring local fashion to a global market is no idle dream for Carmona. He has done the math, prepared the concept and artwork over the past two years. When he met PR and marketing maven Carmina Sanchez-Jacob for lunch, she working on the back end, producing the Salon Series for the last four years, and the wheels were set in motion.

“Salon Series designers Dennis Lustico (also a pioneer of the series) and Ivarluski Aseron were saying, ‘We can do this every year, but what is next for us?’” Sanchez-Jacob recalled. Given Philippine fashion’s predominantly made-to-order business model, the local customer is spoiled for choice, “But if you want to grow as a business and sell, that’s a deterrent. You can’t have that same relationship with each and every client.”

During the Salon Series, she recalls the challenges the designers faced were focused on meeting their commitments because of the handiwork required. “The business of fashion is an issue of deliveries,” she says. Joining forces with beauty queen and sales and marketing professional Valerie Lim and Asia Pacific MNC corporate veteran Henry Chan, that’s where Fashion Exchange International comes in.

The brand management and fashion marketing platform opens on July 7 at the Marriott Grand Ballroom (the largest ballroom in the Philippines), marketed as a buyer’s show and showroom to help build local labels into a ready-to-wear, retail model with overseas distribution.

“Buyers are not just people who can potentially bring us business, we also see them as a resource for knowledge,” Sanchez-Jacob explains. “They can come to us and say ‘I’m not buying from you this year because this is what your designers need to work on.’” FEI has invited buyers from Singapore, Jakarta (one representing Galleries Lafayette in Jakarta), and a showroom owner from Paris connected to distributors in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, all strategic in terms of markets they would like to build on. These relationships will guide how FEI builds each brand. “It’s one thing to design for the sake of designing and another to know what the buyers want. You want to know if your designs are too complicated for them to bring into their market or how to bring down the costs.”

Joining Lustico and Aseron are Francis Libiran, Rajo Laurel (who Sanchez-Jacob had already invited for Salon Series 4), and a diffusion line by Indonesian couture designer Tex Saverio, TXID who will be showing new collections that they deem to represent their aesthetic in a global market, forecasted for Resort 2017.

“Tex Saverio was key to all this,” Sanchez-Jacob says, explaining TXID’s inclusion. She met Saverio and his partner Warren Liu while traveling to find partnerships for FEI. Saverio was very open about sharing how he, a Jakarta-based designer, was able to make it to Paris Fashion Week and is now part of the roster, the only Southeast Asian to have a slot. “If an Indonesian can do it, equally talented Filipinos can, too,” Sanchez-Jacob says.

Rounding up the FEI portfolio are Aranaz, Ann Ong, Jail Jeans by Chris Jasler, Jeffrey Rogador, John Herrera, Ken Samudio, Maco Custodio, Proudrace, and Rosenthal Tee, displaying their previous and current collections.

Lim, who will be the face of FEI as its sales head, explains these brands are invited based on how they have already established their own brand DNA. Name recall and being Google-able is important. (For instance, Laurel is the first Filipino on the cover of Women’s Wear Daily, Libiran came out on America’s Next Top Model and has been worn by celebrities, while Aranaz, Proudrace and Ken Samudio have international stockists in online and brick-and-mortar stores.) “We are trying to amplify their current efforts,” she says. The diversity of the portfolio, featuring shoes, accessories, menswear and womenswear, is to show the breadth of what the Filipino designer can offer.

To maximize reach, part of Carmona’s concept is to seize the power of technology. FEI has filmed the fashion process using the high-res, clear camera of the Samsung S7 that can be viewed as a 360-degree virtual reality on the Samsung VR. “The 360 digital fashion experience makes it reachable to a global audience,” he describes. All content can be seen and shared from their YouTube channel.

The next step for FEI is the biggest: taking care of matching designers and labels with suppliers outside for sourcing, manufacturing (opening channels for retail factory hubs at Vietnam, Indonesia, or China), delivering, and even licensing further down the line, all towards standardizing the quality of the pieces.

FEI has invested in partnerships with factories. “If you build a relationship for a designer in a factory, you have a very small line and they don’t give you the time of day. If you have a collective that has a need to produce, you get the attention of serious factories that can do serious work.” Sanchez-Jacob explains.

FEI’s presence is mostly online in terms of marketing and digitalizing designer lookbooks. Independent of the Philippine Trade and Investment Center and of any government support, they will not be investing in a showroom anytime soon, an unnecessary cost for the time being since Manila is not a fashion capital that can attract international buyers and stylists all year round — at least not yet.