Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Wednesday, 2 November 2016 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka Design Festival – the industry’s biggest platform to showcase its innovations and for knowledge sharing, is scheduled to take place this November with a new age paradigm for Sri Lanka Apparel. A major highlight of SLDF’s apparel agenda to support the industry is the South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum (SAALF).
A powerful forum that facilitates new knowledge and illuminating discussions that shape the industry’s future, SAALF’s 2016 edition promises to map out the learnings that will support Sri Lanka Apparel take a quantum leap in 2017.
The South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum has been held as part of Sri Lanka Design Festival for the last seven years and has managed to gather great interest from fashion industry professionals in South Asia and abroad. This year, the forum brings into highlight the wave of change taking place across all industries including fashion, and how to use this transformation as an opportunity, opposed to seeing it as a challenge. With a series of power-packed sessions from some of the world’s leading game-changers in fashion and apparel, this forum aims to deliver fresh insights and new knowledge to harness the power of change. To deliver this all-important message, the forum has selected several speakers who have disrupted existing fashion business models to reinvent them or to transform completely; these fashionintellectuals will be flown to Sri Lanka to share their real experiences and lessons learnt.
Among the key discussions held will be the session led by The Future Laboratory- world’s top consultancy for trend and market analysis. The founders of this award-winning London-based consultancy, Chris Sanderson and Martin Raymond will be the opening speakers of SAALF 2016 with the topic; Disruption, Disorientation, Displacement, Disconnection, Distortion – Welcome to the Age of the Millennials. The session will analyse the current market and the millennial consumer mind-set which have become the defining factors for today’s buying habits. Sanderson and Raymond will also walk the audience through some of the radical new possibilities that threaten to shake-up the fashion biz as we know it. Through this discussion that dives into the infinite possibilities of the future of fashion, SAALF aims set the context for the rest of the forum.
Providing a fresh approach to relooking at business at this age of transformation, is the Managing Director of Kookai, Rob Cromb. Although a business that has a traditional vertical model, Kookai has managed to stay relevant even in the minds of a young consumers in their twenties. Cromb will discuss how his personal mantra ‘reinvent, reinvent, reinvent’ also became an obsession for his brand and allowed it to stay focused on their niche and provide them something different by mass customisation of basics.
Adrian Elliott, the president of apparel and footwear, of the world’s largest thread maker Coats, will also be a distinguished speaker visiting Sri Lanka at the invitation of Coats Thread Lanka Managing Director Douglas Aceiro. Elliott will share his decades’ worth experience in one of the fashion value chain leaders, to discuss how despite its worldwide success, Coats is preparing for a day that ‘joining’ technology may become obsolete pushing them to reinvent yet again.
Mapping the future of any industry would require a serious analysis of its competitors. As China emerges as Asia’s largest economy and manufacturing power, SAALF takes a look at what makes the industrial strength of the East-Asian nation. For this, a viewpoint from the interior of China will be provided by Ben Cavendar: Principal, China Research Group- one of the world’s leading strategic market intelligence firms in China. This session will shed light on how China is leveraging everything design to speak the lingo of the modern consumer- an important learning point for the local apparel industry which is beginning to integrate design as a value maker for their business.
An interesting take on how design will evolve into an essential value in the future while also changing its applications, will be highlighted in a panel discussion between several international professionals who work in design through multiple approaches. For this, British educationalists Patrick Gottelier and Jane Rapley OBE Prof. Emeritus Central Saint Martin’s UK, will be in conversation with British footwear and accessory design specialist Joanne Stoker moderated by a leading name in the Sri Lankan IT business, Naresh Abeyesekara. Another interesting panel discussion will be that moderated by the forum chair Kurt Cavano, between Aroon Hirdaramani, JehanJayasooriya, NissangaWarnapura and Amreen Ashraf who are some of the young generation of apparel manufacturing leaders. They will discuss how, with the emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organisational forms will have to be rethought.
The forum will also include speakers from other industries such as the automotive trade that had to face serious challenges and reinvent drastically to cater to the millennial generation whose life ideals don’t often include owning a car. SAALF will also share an insight from the international designer Danit Peleg- the world’s first to 3D print fashion using home printing technology; Danit who caused much-talk in the world fashion scene with her graduate collection that seemed to challenge the future of manufacturing fashion will be making a digital appearance at the forum to share her viewpoint on where fashion manufacturing is heading. SAALF will be chaired by Kurt Cavano – Founder and Chief Strategy officer of GT Nexus, world’s leading solution provider in hosted technology for apparel chains.
With Sri Lankan fashion manufacturers looking to make winds of change into an opportunity rather than a challenge, the South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum will play the pivotal role in gathering the body of knowledge that will propel the industry into this future. The forum, with its fresh insights and ground-breaking thought leadership, will engage the local apparel industry in a global dialogue on ‘transformation’ on 5th November at SLECC, as part of the annual Sri Lanka Design Festival.
SLDF will take place on 4th, 5thand 6th November at SLECC Colombo, with the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Runways hosted by AOD in partnership with DIMO hosting Mercedes-Benz Fashion Runways, Coats Thread – official thread and zip partner, GT Nexus – official technology partner, HNB- Official Banking Partner, Mount Lavinia Hotel- Official Host, Wijeya Newspapers Group- Print Media Partner, Just-Style – International Media Partner, Free Lanka-Official Beverage Partner , Secquoro – Business Transformation Partner, Salon Kess - Official Hair and Make up Partner and We Are Designers as well key apparel industry participants MAS, Hirdaramani, Timex, Star Garments , LICC, MRC, Orit, Innovative Knits, EKKO, Union Apparel, Penguin, Lanka Leather, Rakshaa, Tee Jay Lanka, Avirate and Vogue Tex. The event is endorsed by the Joint Apparel Association Forum.
For partnerships, participation and more information, contact the SLDF secretariat on 076 777 0306 or [email protected]
