California Apparel News

The Fashion Incubator San Francisco (FISF), sponsored by Macy’s in Union Square, is a new program that was created to help the city’s designers become sustainable entrepreneurs. “The goal of the program is to help strengthen and sustain the West Coast fashion voice, along with creating new businesses and employment avenues for the people of the Bay Area,” said Amy Williams, fashion design chair at California College of the Arts and a founding board member of the program who is helping develop the curriculum. “It is very much about both nurturing and sustaining innovation in the San Francisco fashion industry and community.”

Six “designers in residence” will be chosen in March 2012 to participate in the year-long program, which will include training in business, manufacturing, design copyright, law, public relations and marketing, as well as use of workshop and showroom space, which has been created for the designers at Macy’s. The participants will have access to sewing space, machinery, dress forms and cutting tables, in addition to a selling showroom, storage area and design offices, which have all been provided by Macy’s at a discounted monthly rate.

As part of the program, they will have opportunities to meet with buyers and merchants to present their collections and ideas and will continue to be mentored by local designers and businesspeople after the program has finished.

“This is about fostering new businesses and supporting these new entrepreneurs with education, physical space and public relations that would not be readily affordable or available to single start-up practitioners,” Williams explained.

While there are organizations in the Bay Area that offer expertise in different areas of the apparel business, including manufacturing and design, many new designers are not aware of what they need to launch or sustain a business or how best to present their clothing line, and the Fashion Incubator aims to help fill that gap, she said.

The curriculum will include topics such as time management, creating a market plan, line critiques, branding and imaging, and costing and accounting, according to Diane Green, who is helping develop the courses for the program and serves as chair for the fashion department at City College of San Francisco.

“Assuming that they are talented, they will have the business knowledge to actually create a fashion design business,” Green said. “This is what a lot of young people are lacking. They have the ideas and the creativity but don’t have the business sense, and so they will gain the entrepreneurial skills that they will need to succeed in the fashion design industry.”

The participating designers will be responsible for paying their own living expenses, but the program itself will be free, other than a $250 monthly fee for use of the workshop, machinery and showroom space.

Long known as a fashion hub, San Francisco has seen many of its designers, manufacturers and apparel businesses leave for other cities over the years.

“San Francisco had been the third-biggest design capital, behind New York and Los Angeles,” said Betsy Nelson, vice president of media relations and cause marketing for Macy’s Northwest and Southwest and vice president of the FISF board of directors. “That has changed over the course of time, and a lot of that is because of the manufacturing shift. Without the support here, local designers feel like they have to leave and go to New York or somewhere else to become successful.”

FISF is hoping to bring some of its fashion business back with the launch of the program, which was based on the Chicago Fashion Incubator at Macy’s, launched in 2008.

“Eighty-three percent of the designers who participated in the Chicago Fashion Incubator have created successful businesses,” Nelson said.

Dennis Conaghan, executive director for the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, said the program is in line with the center’s goal to attract and keep jobs in San Francisco.

“It fits nicely into our mission of small businesses and businesses that will, hopefully, eventually grow. Eighty percent of our businesses are small.”

FISF is looking for designers who are interested in establishing their business in the city of San Francisco, not the surrounding Bay Area, and who also have the goal of using local manufacturers and resources.

To this end, FISF has reached out to organizations such as SFMade with the possibility of partnering with them for factory tours to help educate designers on apparel manufacturing and how to approach a manufacturer professionally.

SFMade is a nonprofit focused on building the manufacturing sector in San Francisco and helps connect designers with sewing factories.

“Our role would be to help these designers once they become more established to connect with subcontracting resources to keep their production local,” explained Janet Lees, director of programs and communications for the organization.

While the final details of who will be involved with the program and who will be able to apply for it are still being determined, the program will only be eligible to designers of apparel, not shoes or accessories, Nelson said.

The program will be formally announced in September at “Fashion’s Night Out,” after which applications will be available online.

“We’re poised; it’s a right time,” Williams said. “There’s a commitment back to building products in San Francisco.”