
On the way back from our meeting with one of our Automated Systems partners in New York City on Tuesday, Charlie and I stopped by Fashion Market Magazine Group. We met with Mozz Manzoor, Libby Dowd, and Nick Monjo of FMMG to discuss the Merrow SampleRoom program. While Merrow has been indirectly working with with the fashion world for the last 150 years, using edgings and stitches with a variety of concepts, “SampleRoom” is Merrow’s first pro-active approach to engaging designers. It’s a relatively new world for Merrow and we’re eager to learn as much as we can from industry professionals.


Fashion Market Magazine Group has 4 publications under its auspices – Body, Fashion, MedicalApparel, and School Uniforms. Nick Monjo, who started FMMG about 25 years ago, runs an intriguing business. While their competition, for example, WWD (Women’s Wear Daily), runs the gamut in terms of the fashion industry, and is a publication that is found on every retail manager’s desk, FMMG’s publications are targeted to specific industries. It allows an advertiser to effectively target specific markets.

One of the most interesting stories that we heard was from Libby Dowd, a senior writer for FMMG, who told us how entertaining it was for her to speak to designers about the next hot item each season, which tends to be based on what type of fabrics can be supplied by key manufacturers. Libby mentioned that seasonally, most designers end up talking about the same hot item as future popularity is determined by not a new idea, but what fabric will be supplied to the designers and fashion-houses. It seemed to us that this model of manufacturers and finishers dictating fashion trends to designers based on their own limited mechanical capabilities wasn't exactly logical. Shouldn't designers be the ones dictating the future trends? And why should any party's ideas be limited by hardware and capital expenditures?


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