Omnifinery: What Is It and How Is It Eaten
A Step-by-Step guide and a chain of thoughts for aspiring independent fashion designers. Here is Omnifinery, a fashion tech start-up and its first initial Press Release 001, that is defining the general concept and answering some questions to ignite the flame.
Omnifinery, pronounced [om·nee·fai·nuh·ree], is a Hong Kong based web-shop and fashion platform with global reach. Founded in 2015, Omnifinery is pacing the vanguard of directional retail with a mix of luxury, streetwear, and avant-garde labels. It produces industry-leading original content and take pride in building our own technology solutions and systems from scratch. Omnifinery’s main field of focus has grown beyond that of a typical e-commerce entity as it explores the nexus of content, commerce, and culture. Currently serving 150 countries, Omnifinery is becoming a cultural protagonist in its own right.
In todays globalised markets, it is incredibly difficult to stand out for a low budget bootstrapping fashion company. Small markets are flooded with fast fashion competitors. Big established designer markets are followed by devoted fanbase of customers and media, and the entry ticket is unreasonably high for an aspiring ambitious individual.
An entry ticket does not necessarily mean a one off fee to success, but rather a set of systems and rules that imply long term planning and strategy regardless constant failing. Marketing and product presentation fees, runways and showrooms fees, distribution chains’ executives convincing, a constant chasing for partnerships is a big budget and load of time consuming endeavour, and we are not yet mentioning the costs of designing, sampling and manufacturing a garment yet.
Even though passion and optimism are the driving forces pushing the progress forward, we still have to be realistic and precisely define our short term goals as well as our long term goals. And all processes shall be optimised as efficiently as possible, which is generally the most challenging for independent fashion businesses.
All marketing efforts are focused to eventually drive sales, and it is definitely a fact that small retail businesses are struggling at the moment with ever-rising rents for the street front and online optimised e-commerce platform is a definite rational answer. The platform shall be clean and clear, and easy to navigate and easy to fulfil purchasing transactions. Sellers turn to the generic marketplaces as there are many of those indeed these days, but unfortunately these marketplaces’ commissions and fees are incredibly high while not guaranteeing sales, and their final B2C product selection turns out to be incredibly random in the end, from various segments of the industry and not properly curated, which jeopardising the overall quality and leaves the fashionista consumers appalled. And most unfortunate of all is that the designers are still left on their own to promote their merchandise by themselves. Eventually these marketplaces start selling advertising to the seller under false expectations to stand out from the competition, and it turns into B2B business model priority, and completely neglects the B2C success. There is a niche for a more focused platform to cater independent fashion labels needs, and facilitate an easier distribution and online retail.
There are also some Online Showrooms for Designers that promote exposure, however the designers while enjoying some vanity and praise, obviously want to prioritise selling their designs as soon as possible to keep afloat and be in position to develop new collections the next season. While showrooms can still be effective in public relationship efforts for certain fees, they are definitely not there to drive any major sales, but they always ask their service fees in advance.
Karl Lagerfeld famously repeated over and over — “If anyone wants to make a complement to my work and efforts, spare the words, just go to the store and buy the product.”
Analysing these case studies and e-commerce niches we have been developing our own standalone project: Omnifinery.
Omnifinery is a fashion tech online platform created to focus on these needs to support the market breakthrough for independent fashion designers and labels. Omni — stands for an omni present omni channel, while Finery — stands for an nice way of saying the best look. So Omnifinery here we go.
Omnifinery started its development on paper as an idea in 2015 in Hong Kong and is now currently based between Hong Kong, Singapore and Hungary. It was founded by Evgeny Avetisian, a creative director who worked in various segments of fashion industry from luxury pret-a-porter to fast fashion and denim brands. With international experience within manufacturing sector and understanding of what a fashion start-up needs to flourish, Evgeny and a team of collaborators created the project to build a community of fashionistas, designers, artists and creatives who share same visual language and aesthetic values.
Currently Omnifinery is divided into three distinct parts: Fashion Products for Women, Fashion Products for Men, and an Editorial part of a projects. While products for women and men are self-explanatory, Editorial is going to be a cultural resource of frequent articles and critical opinion stories on various cultural happenings that matter the most today and shape the culture of tomorrow.
We have also created our unique #OMNIYOUOMNIME hashtag that will facilitate communication and Q&As on social media platforms, as well as by tagging #OMNIYOUOMNIME hashtag we will be featuring all enthusiasts on our Instagram Feed too. By the way, do not forget to follow us for daily updates.
Omnifinery platform serves as a global product catalogue, unites well selected curated brands under one umbrella and offers them an e-commerce and marketing channels to help establish their markets, while independent fashion companies continue focusing their efforts on developing their brands’ product range.
Currently Omnifinery already stocks and partners with five brands: Ad Astra, Kometa.a, Twins Diverse, Omni, Vengru. We are very glad and proud of our partnering brands progress and successes. And we are currently negotiating agreements with more designers who are joining us later this year and will be announcing our partnerships in the up-coming press releases, while all products will be appearing for sale too upon their new arrivals.
We are on a constant look out for a potential fashion talent, and next trendy it product, therefore we encourage independent designers and labels to reach out to us at contact@omnifinery.com for eventual cooperations, so we can discuss various benefits and growth strategies of such an umbrella partnership. Do not hesitate to reach out!
Our goal is to continue advancing with a steady development of Omnifinery concept alongside our partners and continue growing our community all together. To facilitate this advancement in 2020 we are launching series of campaigns and will be announcing the updates throughout the year.
Omnifinery — Feel Comfort in Your Individuality
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Evgeny is an art director and a global citizen based in Hong Kong and working between Asia and Europe.
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