Trends by David Tupaz Couture
TRADE SHOW REPORT
Collaboration and One-Stop Shopping at Sourcing at MAGIC
Sourcing at MAGIC, held Aug. 19–21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, was the place to be for fashion brands, businesses and sourcing professionals to connect and collaborate with a community of global manufacturers, suppliers and service providers. More than 1,250 companies representing 29 countries and regions from Africa to China, India to Peru, Southeast Asia to the U.S. and Canada exhibited. Sessions included technology use in the fashion industry, artificial intelligence and how to incorporate it into a business, innovations in sustainability, fashion entrepreneurship and a fashion tech pitch space designed to support up-and-coming businesses.
The Sustainability + Social Good Gallery featured sustainable exhibitors verified by Hey Social Good.
The Sourcing Trends initiative launched this season, unpacking trends going into 2025. “We’re partnering with Fashion Snoops to create trend reports and trend resources for our attendees,” said Andreu David, vice president, Sourcing at MAGIC, who added, “We work alongside them on coming up with the trends for the following season. It’s downloadable for attendees and it’s being packaged as MMGNET Group so it’s our own trend report,” said David.
Looking at technology’s evolving role in the fashion industry, the Fashion Technology Hub included service providers Kornit Digital, Planiform and WoongJin Inc.
Patented technology by Los Angeles–based Tukatech aims to eliminate the guesswork and waste in fashion design. “Some 98 percent of samples are thrown in the garbage,” said Ram Sareen, chairman and CEO of Tukatech. “Most of our clients don’t make a sample—everything is done digitally,” said Sareen, who added, “We help the industry not make the garments and then sell them but to sell the garments first and then make them. We have about 1,200 companies today who don’t make any samples or inventory—they do everything digitally.”
Seoul, South Korea–based Samsung SDS Cello Square, a digital freight-forwarding platform, was showing solutions for small- and medium-size companies that need ocean and air rates as well as fulfillment solutions on all logistics services. “A lot of companies right now are kind of having trouble getting freight from overseas, so we help them get customs clearance and everything they need to get the commodity here,” said David Hahn, national sales manager for Samsung SDS America.
Los Angeles–based AIMS360 was exhibiting its enterprise resource planning system, which allows a brand to run the back end of its business from soup to nuts. “Everything from the moment a style comes alive and you’re ready to sell, we handle the customer management, order management, inventory management, warehouse management, electronic data interchange, picking and packing, shipping, production, cut and sew, garment dye,” said Shahin Kohan, AIMS360 president, who noted that any brand that is an importer or producer can use the software to run its business.
Hangzhou, China–based Trendscopes is a marketing intelligence platform that allows clients, mostly fashion-related brands, to collect competitive data. “We do that so clients can analyze the market and know what ’s trending and what’s not,” said Miaomiao Wen, co-founder and CTO.
