California Apparel News

A virtual-retail veteran is entering the digital trade-show space as event producers continue to explore alternatives to on-site apparel-industry forums. Los Angeles-based FashionGo recently announced that it would produce FashionGo Week Aug. 24-Sept. 6.

“Many businesses are pivoting to digital experiences now as we adjust to what we think of as the new normal,” said Paul Lee, chief executive officer of FashionGo's parent company, NHN Global, a Los Angeles subsidiary of South Korea’s NHN Corporation. “We’ve been a resource and partner to our retailers and brands for almost 20 years. We are good at this and we’ve been doing this a long time.”

With an emphasis on its heritage as a technology company, FashionGo boasts a roster of 1,200 brands and approximately 1 million products on its platform, which it foresees connecting to 420,000 buyers in retail. In addition to its Style Match Plus tool, which affords comparisons between style, vendor and price, FashionGo Week will also feature its Best of the Best—a list of the items that are selling most during the event and a Meet Our Brands segment that affords insight into Fall/Winter 2020 trends.

“We provide insight into intentional buying and visibility into real-time bestsellers,” Lee explained. “Now, more than ever, retailers need to know what they need to buy for a higher sell-through rate and insight into trends that will keep selling, particularly in a buy-now, wear-now environment.”

On the platform, FashionGo Week will afford educational opportunities through expert panels led by apparel leaders. These sessions will include “Building a Cohesive Brand” with Jeanel Alvarado, CEO and founder of Retail Boss; “How to Successfully Start an Online Business” with Syama Meaghar, CEO and founder of Scaling Retail; and “AW20 Trend Report, A New Normal: Fashion for a Shifting World” with Lauren Parker of Creative Media. It is Lee’s hope that the cohesive environment, which blends his company’s technology with a virtual trade event, will allow retailers who are seasoned digital buyers and those who are newcomers to the online trade-event space to find solutions during this challenging business climate.

“We are global, and we are seeing a conversion of retail buyers who were on-site focused now coming online. It’s a great thing to see the buyers making the discovery and saying this is fantastic that the purchasing process is so seamless,” he said. “We’ve always felt that we’ve had a commitment to the fashion community and especially during COVID-19.”