Fashion Industry Marketing and Web Design

While attending an event last night with the FashionHP organization (website coming soon) here in Dallas, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how overwhelmingly open the models were. When discussing design work or other web work with actors, I seem to come across a basic need to put head-shots and reels online... and that is about the extent of the demand. Fashion models (at least in this case) seem to have a much wider interest in art, design, social media, and collaborative ideas. I wonder if the Model Mayhem-type sites are just working so well in this industry that photo and video storage is just sort of old news, but it was refreshing nonetheless.

Tech note: Like many other talent industries, the need for better e-mail marketing, networking, contact management, etc. offering is never filled. Also, models are all essentially micro/small-business owners in one stage of development or another. Their needs for marketing coaches, business guidance, and administrative automation is very much like the traditional business sector -- maybe with a smaller budget. But then again, the models seem very open to collaborative services which might involvement several independents or non-traditional mediums. The conversation I had was certainly more open than closed to ideas that work.

The other nice aspect of the fashion space is that their events are well sponsored. Liquid budgets are available, if only in smallish chunks, from liquor, car, clothing, food, sports, and other youth-focused companies. This makes obvious sense on the surface (models make a real pretty event in the foreground or the background :), but from a marketing standpoint there is a consumer audience through and through in nearly every aspect of output from the fashion industry. I would have never noticed the relevance without spending some good social time with these talented people. Thanks FashionHP... you will see me more often.