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With the surge of the Internet and the increasing popularity of Western fashion trends in Eastern territories and vice versa, the business of international fashion agents and distributors is on the rise. Let's explore about Fashion agents.

Tahir Basheer, an industry member specialising in fashion and media law for leading London-based law firm, Sheridans, offers expert legal advice on using fashion agents to sell your products.

Keeping up with this international demand can be very tricky for fashion designers and brands who already struggle to keep up with local business. It is for this reason that designers and brands are increasingly appointing fashion agents to sell their products in foreign territories on their behalf.

Using fashion agents internationally should give the designer and the brand, an element of control over how their products are marketed and sold. However, the appointment of agents is heavily re...

Hiring an Ad agency can be a tedious task if you are unaware of their whereabouts or working process. Our legal expert from Fashion Insiders gives us the best tips on how to hire an ad agency.

Tahir Basheer from Sheridan's law firm offers his advice on considerations to be made before hiring an ad agency.

In order to increase brand awareness and drive sales, you may engage with an advertising agency to provide services for your fashion business. These services range from a full-blown campaign to specific online advertisements. As the fashion industry tends to be image orientated, high impact advertising is incredibly important.

Here are my top tips of things to be aware of when hiring an ad agency.

Ownership

A fashion brand, as much as possible, should ensure that they own all the rights in the work produced and services rendered by the agency, which includes owning the intellectual property (IP) that makes up the advertising campaign. The ideal position for the brand should be th...

If you are considering crowdfunding to launch your fashion product, there are a number of legal issues that should be considered before trying to raise money through such a platform.

Tahir Basheer of Sheridans law firm shares his advice to keep you ahead of the game (note: most of the points are relevant to Equity Crowdfunding).

There are three main types of crowdfunding:

Debt Crowdfunding

Investors loan money directly to an individual and hopefully receive their money back with interest. Also called peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, it allows for the lending of money while bypassing traditional banks. Returns are financial, but investors also have the benefit of having contributed to the success of an idea they believe in. An example of a Debt Crowdfunding platform is the Lending Club.

Equity Crowdfunding

Investors buy shares in a company and become part owners. They make a return on their investment either by being paid a dividend or by selling their shares at a later date, when the ...

Your brand is the part of your business that communicates to the outside world who you are, the quality of your goods and services, and your company’s image. Therefore, it is an important and valuable asset. One way of protecting your brand is through registering it as a trademark.

The rise of brands converging across various industries has meant that trademark lawyers have to monitor changes in the law more than ever.

At Sheridans, our trademark specialists advise a number of individuals, brands and agencies in innovative projects across all leisure, media, and entertainment.

We provide a one-stop-shop from brand genesis through to brand development, exploitation and protection and provide cost-effective advice on trademarks, filing strategy and brand development.

Our clients receive relevant, focused advice for reaching their business goals.

In this article, we provide some “top tips” for the use of trademarks to protect your business.

1. Why register?

Trademarks are a valuabl...

Rose Spinelli reveals some of the benefits of crowdfunding fashion start-ups.

We were fortunate enough to engage with the motivational force that is Rose Spinelli, a crowdfunding consultant based in America. She has been named among the "Top 100 Thought Leaders in Crowdfunding Today." Her website, The CrowdFundamentals, provides expert advice and is a powerful resource for fashion professionals wishing to learn more about crowdfunding fashion start-ups.

She said: “One benefit of crowdfunding fashion start-ups is that a piece of clothing will go into production only after it receives backer critical mass.

“Once the threshold for the minimum amount of backers is achieved, the piece goes into production. No waiting for Fashion Week to tell you what you should buy!”

You Get a Percentage of the Take

A great benefit of many of these sites is that if the crowd ‘up-votes’ your product and it’s selected for production, you get a percentage of the take.

Boutique Appeal vs. Cookie Cutter

N...

Financing a fashion business is one of the key components and prerequisites to being in business. There are some businesses that do not require large capital at the start, and in fact, some get the clients to pay in advance for the product or service offered. Sadly, these are not usually fashion businesses.

In fashion, vast amounts of finance and capital are required, often in advance. Disappointingly, financing a fashion business is like throwing money into a black hole: the more you throw in, the more you need again, and again…

So, being good with money, or partnering with someone who is good at managing finance, is essential. Knowing how to raise money is also important and in most cases, it is necessary.

In the past, the route to starting a brand was often paved by fashion graduates or ex-fashion employees, whereas today anyone can launch a brand. Often, more mature people make a career change and armed with passion and perhaps a good idea, they launch a new fashion business.

R...

If you have decided that finding investors for your fashion business is the best option for you, here is some advice on how to prepare yourself to find the right one; whether you’re looking for a venture capitalist, an angel investor, a super-angel or a growth investor.

Finding an investor is not for everyone, but if you have the financial backing that you need, you will be free to work on promoting your fashion business, design more products and sell, sell, sell.

You should have a plan

First things first: You need to make sure that you have a business in place. One that is attractive and stable enough for someone to plough their money into.

One of the main components of a good business plan is the research you put into it. You should be aware of your target audience a.k.a. your "ideal customers," your competition, the demand for your product, and where it would sit in the hopefully hungry market.

You need to make sure that your business sounds, and actually are, worthy of investm...

 Working with bloggers has become a mainstream modus operandi for anyone looking to gain media exposure for their brand. Some communicate with their audience via copy, some via video (vloggers), and some do both. If you’re not familiar with what a blogger is, think of the names you might have heard in conversation or even in the news, like Zoella, Liberty London Girl and Bryanboy. In this article, we will tell you how to work with bloggers.

These people offer their personal reflections about trends, products, brands, food or anything that they choose. They build up unique fan bases and large followings of people who look to bloggers to inform their purchasing decisions or trend research. It’s a phenomenon that fashion brands have bought in to; bloggers are approached by companies with products and asked to share their positive feedback with their following – and sometimes the bloggers are paid to do so.

It’s important to note that not every blogger is as big as Zoella, and each blogg...

 “Collaboration” is defined as “...the action of working with someone to produce something.”

Synonyms: cooperation, alliance, partnership, participation, combination, association.

Since embracing Instagram as my main go-to for Social Marketing for my new business, all I seem to read while browsing through posts is “Can we collaborate?”, “Looking for collaborations” etc., etc.

A few years ago these high fashion collaborations were in their early stages. Designers avoided them as they were fearful of diluting their brand ideology and even tarnishing a luxury fashion house’s name. Collaboration implied that you needed help and were unable to create memorable collections without working with others in your field.

However, the landscape of fashion has become increasingly democratised, and the formula of offering limited edition pieces designed in collaboration with another brand or person proved to be extraordinarily lucrative and beneficial for both parties.

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Having a website is no longer a choice for a business. Regardless of the size, industry, or location – a company not having a website online is like not having a name.

Gosia Radkiewicz, co-founder at BB E-commerce and Bike Belle, takes a look at the possibilities open to start-ups who are in need of an online presence but are on a shoestring budget.

With ever more people leaving the comfort of the 9-5 job and starting their own businesses or side projects, getting exposure and reaching a wider audience is imperative. Imagine going to a business meeting without business cards: new clients and opportunities would simply bypass you, heading directly to your competitor. Sometimes the first thing we need is to test a market or get a web presence and determine what kind of customer base we will have once we get off the ground. Either way, in today's day and age most entrepreneurs operate on a tight budget.

Do it now

We are all busy people and sometimes it feels impossible to spare this e...