"Co-located with 12th Prime Source Forum, the annual meeting place for the global fashion industry, World Fashion Design Competition (WFDA) is slated for March 13-14, 2017 at The Langham Hong Kong. This is a B2B platform offering producers opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities of manufacturing designed fashion items from around the world under one roof. Unlike other fashion design competitions, WFDA focuses on collaboration amongst producers, designers and buying offices of multinational brands or e-tailers."
Co-located with 12th Prime Source Forum, the annual meeting place for the global fashion industry, World Fashion Design Competition (WFDA) is slated for March 13-14, 2017 at The Langham Hong Kong. This is a B2B platform offering producers opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities of manufacturing designed fashion items from around the world under one roof. Unlike other fashion design competitions, WFDA focuses on collaboration amongst producers, designers and buying offices of multinational brands or e-tailers.
“Sourcing managers at my level or in senior positions no longer visit local and overseas trade fairs to source new products. We consider new suppliers by existing connections, selected referrals or find them at high-level conferences. Ideally, new suppliers are coming to us to showcase their innovations so that we can make decisions here immediately,” opines a sourcing executive of one of the top three apparel retailers in Europe.
The pattern of the fashion sourcing world is changing. Nowadays, suppliers take more initiative to present their ready-designed or ready-for-adjustment products to clients for critique or selection. A stronger, reliable and allied partnership between buying offices and suppliers is needed. “With the aim of strengthening the undivided buyer-supplier relationship, for its first debut, we launched the World Fashion Design Competition and Award (WFDA) at the signature event of the fashion industry, Prime Source Forum Hong Kong in March 2016,” explained Martin Keil, MD, Yeh Shen.
The Objective
With increasing number of design programs launched around the world, one can see more and more qualified designers who have graduated from top fashion institutes looking for opportunities to show off their talent. How to win orders amid the gloomy global economy and sluggish fashion sales is the key to success. Strengthening design capabilities to outpace the rivalry seems a win-win approach. Thus, WFDA emerges to fill this gap – to synergise the collaboration between fashion designers and producers in order to provide international brands and e-tailers with a broader selection. WFDA is an international event. Members of industry associations, designers from fashion schools, governmental agencies or even individuals from around the world are welcomed to participate in WFDA to work towards enhancing the global fashion industry together. Renowned designers, chief editors of fashion magazines, senior executives of sourcing and product development departments of fashion brands and retailers form the part of distinguished judges.
The Participants
Fashion producers from the global supply chain have participated in this international Award and Competition. As buying offices will contact producers to place orders of any appropriate fashion items found during the two-day event, competition registration will be in the name of the producers’ organisations for easy operation. Nonetheless, young designers from fashion institutions and universities are encouraged to work with producers to apply for the competition, or to contact their institutes or universities for pairing with producers. Participating companies are categorised into two main groups according to their designers’ working experience: group A: Designers are under/post-graduates with maximum three years’ working experience; and group B: Designers have more than three years’ working experience in fashion design.
Competition Categories
Participating items will be classified into: fashionCHIC – Contemporary fashion; fashionCLUE – Solutions for fashion production or supply chain; fashionDECO – Fashion accessories, including footwear or carrying items; fashionKIDS – Fashion for our future; and fashionTECH – Fashion in wearable technology. The selection criteria is based on these parameters: 20 per cent aesthetic; 20 per cent functionality; 20 per cent innovation; 20 per cent sustainability and 20 per cent commercialisation. Amongst all participating items, five special awards will be given to winners who receive the highest scores on the above criteria. In addition to these awards, overall winner of the competition will be presented to the company that wins the most awards overall. A special award, ‘Country of the Year’, will also be given to the country representative in recognition of the best efforts and keenest participation of the country represented.
The first WFDA is aimed at getting fashion producers’ efforts-of-the-years acknowledged and recognised by the industry and showcase their abilities to design to senior executives of buying houses attending PSF. WFDA will act as a springboard for future business collaborations. Other advantages include promoting the latest collection of the designed products; generating possible leads through interaction with judges and other participants; interacting with decision makers over the two-day Forum and acquiring industry updates and the wisdom of speakers through discussions at PSF. Be a part of this trade event which promises a lot more than just networking. It’s simply multiplying your business boundaries and aspirations to another level.
