Fashion Industry Journey, International Shopping, HSN and More [Video]

Business changes on the fly created new challenges and experieneces.

Editor's note: This is part two of a two part series. Read Part 1 here: Personal and Business Growth In the Fashion Industry [Video]

International shopping trips provide my design team with great inspiration for new designs and trend right ideas for our customers.

Business became more challenging as the sluggish economy made retailers push for lower prices, greater IMU’s and demand margin assistance if their sales plans were not met. It became necessary to have a sales team who could be strong both on the front end as well as the back end--they could not only make the sale.

Inaddition we also had to monitor the selling reports of their business so that we could make sure that buyer’s margin requests were specifically related to our product and not asking for assistance to support unachieved sales goals for their whole department. The retailer was following a typical markdown cadence and not rushing to mark down goods.

The industry seemed to change from the exciting buzz of market week to show new, fresh, and unique product to the business of fashion. Retail was not looking to take fashion risks.

I sometimes feel that this change in business is what made my boss decide to retire from the industry.

It wasn’t the way he had started his business and it wasn’t how he enjoyed running his business. He felt that it was time to leave the industry and pass the baton over. His son who already was running a separate successful company in the apparel business, would now be heading up the company and I wasn’t sure how things would transition for me.

I think whenever any consolidation happens, there’s always the concern that there will be fall-out

The fallout occurs if there is too much redundancy in employee roles, so I hoped I would continue to be a valued employee who could bring a lot to the table in this new environment.

The switch was made and we continued to follow the same course of business without too much change. It was a relatively easy transition where I continued leading the missy design team.

The biggest change was that I now had a CMO which I was a bit wary of initially, but she allowed me the creative freedom to work as before, gave me insight to things I had not been in charge of previously, and allowed me to collaborate with her on new projects at our company.

She had the additional responsibilities of leading up all other design teams directly as well—jr’s, contemporary, kids, and men’s.

As all of this was happening, my “new” company was also very proactive in looking at other acquisitions that could provide us with upticking areas of growth like jr. knits-which could help enhance our existing knits business.

Related separates which was a totally new area and would in its own way lead the path for our entrée into creating “lifestyle” collections. These acquisitions added on new design teams that also fell under my missy team’s umbrella and my staff grew to be quite large.

My CMO collaborated with me at the initial stages to help get these new teams up and running smoothly. These types of acquisitions would be the building blocks of our new future businesses.

Tina Trevino KBL executive fashion industry challenges

All was still working as before and then...

In general, all was still working as before but with my becoming more involved in additional projects.

And then, I received a big shock, our CMO decided to resign, leaving me with the new job of design director to the entire company. When she called me to her office to break this news, I went into a panic with the fear of taking on so much responsibility.

It’s so ironic that my initial feelings during the original transition from father to son were of trepidation in having to report into a CMO and now I was actually going to miss having her as a mentor. While this was the kind of opportunity I could never have imagined landing in my lap—it was also the kind of opportunity that required a lot of commitment and open-mindedness.

I was very excited to take on this massive role, but also worried I would fail. I didn’t feel like I knew enough about all of these businesses to be successful.

Then change came in a big way

Change came in a big way for me with my new responsibilities and business once again changed as many of our retailers started to build up their own product development teams to strengthen their private label in house brands—no longer were any of our secondary and tertiary company labels important—stores wanted either their own in house brands fully developed utilizing their own internal sourcing teams—very little was going to any outside domestic importers.

They were also looking for national brands with recognition in their stores, and the idea of a celebrity endorsed line was also a strong way for stores to create new fresh brands. Retail became run more corporately by top tier management and now the growth of the internet was really beginning to erode brick and mortar store business.

Next- With all of these business changes, I also had a new list of demands and experieneces to handle….

With all of these business changes, I also had a new list of demands and experieneces to handle…

A weekend at home sketching evolves into a versatile dress and separates line to pitch to our next customer. Getting youth involved, like my mini assistant, Grace, is also a fun part of my job.

• Understanding new apparel classifications collections—wovens, bottoms, girls, boys, jr’s, contemporary, mens

• Understanding more about the retail side of business

• Amassing market intelligence across the board from our jr., contemporary, missy, kid’s, men’s businesses to share with our retail partners

• Supporting fast track time & action production calendars to meet the needs of our retailers who were demanding faster fashion

• More aggressive strategies to re-engineer designs to maintain the look of a style but remove some of the costly details that could not meet targeted prices

• Organizing year round design time & action calendars for multiple teams designing collections due each month

• Pitching concepts to celebrities, agencies, and other apparel companies looking to develop brands or re-launch brands

• Setting up computer renderings of in-store floor layouts of product

• Sourcing China for more fabrics, yarns, trims to help my design team

• Setting up photo shoots and look-books for our company’s product.

• Creating lifestyle collections of product that encompass wovens, knits, sweaters, tops, bottoms

• Setting up our coms social media sites Tina high tech performance wear collection Being outside ofmy comfort zone soon became the norm and I actually learned to enjoy these challenges.

Once I learned how to break things down into manageable chunks, organize my design team in a way that better supported the project loads we had to manage, prepare for meetings accordingly and work with people who could help share their insight in some of the areas that I didn’t have full expertise in.

Spending the upfront time to plan and prepare was critical to many of the new situations I would find myself in. Rehearsing and having co-workers poke holes in my presentations was also a good way to build confidence in how to present.

Although my position is as a high level employee within my company and leader to my design team, I am always learning so much from people I come across every day in this business—whether they are young designers with lots of creativity and great ideas or industry veterans who have experienced so much.

That’s part of the process of being able to adapt so well—continuing to glean and learn from industry people.

The biggest challenges coming to us

As fashion moves forward, the biggest challenges coming to us in the apparel industry are from the on-line marketplace.

As we’ve seen the era of technology become the way of doing business, we need to better understand how to function in this fast paced-immediate gratification environment. It’s not going away so we cannot sit comfortably around and just wait for new opportunities to land in our laps.

We have to be a part of creating them, we have to love the challenge of the process, we have to be excited about the unknown—how we incorporate social media, bloggers, vloggers, fashion influencers and create shopping experiences for our customer—these are all questions that we look to answer in creative exciting ways.

These are just part of the next “constant of change” to come my way keeping my job exciting and “glamourous”!

Fun at New York Fashion Week