How do you get someone to pay you money to be associated with something as intangible as your brand?

The first time doing this is always the most difficult, but below are some tricks that you can use to drastically increase your chances of being successful in the endeavor.

Plan your fashion show

The first step is having a plan that’s as concrete as possible. Know exactly how it will be, what your budgets will be, etc. It is unlikely that you’ll have every detail planned, but do a realistic budget which gives you an idea of how much sponsorship you need to raise.

This is as much for your own sake as for the sponsor’s sake. It will give you the confidence to go out and know exactly how much you need to ask for.

Research sponsors

Now that you have a plan for how to proceed it’s time to find the sponsor. This is where many people give up. Where should you start? A great place to start is to look at who is sponsoring your competitors’ shows. In some cases one company will sponsor a number of shows and you can approach them. This is easiest because they already know how it works and realise the benefits since they already done sponsorships.

This is not always possible. For a start, companies only have limited sponsorship budgets and they might well be tied up with your competitors already. A clever trick is to approach the competitors of whoever sponsors other fashion labels. For example, if Champagne house X sponsors shows, approach Champagne house Y with a proposal. Even if you have never worked with a sponsor before, you can point to the benefits enjoyed by X as proof that this really works.

Negotiating with sponsors

This is the point at which you really have to show that you know what you’re doing. Approach them with a clear proposal and make it as easy as possible for them to write you a cheque. Writing sponsorship proposals is an art in itself

Figure out what they want and give it to them. What’s important to them? What type of prominence can you give to their brand? Be careful of giving them too much, you don’t want every single photo of your show to be plastered over with the sponsor’s logo. On the other hand the sponsor has to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth for the sponsorship.

Corporate sponsors love getting free tickets to fashion shows so that their executives can take their partners along to a glamorous evening. They like when there’s going to be a lot of press around. They like it when there are lots of ‘influencers’ who might have a positive impact on their brand. All these things matter. Do a quick breakdown of who will be there.

Getting the sponsor’s money

After focusing on what you have to offer them, move on to what you need from them. If you have done a good job of selling the benefits in the above step, this will be much easier and the sponsor will actually want to give you the money.

To avoid a deadlock it’s a good idea to have a few different scenarios planned. For example, if you pay us £10,000, you’ll get your logo on invitations, logo on a backdrop to the catwalk, etc.

A great trick is to start with presenting a very expensive option. If this proves to be too much for the sponsor’s budget, you can move on to alternative scenarios for less money and less exposure.

Following up with your sponsor

This is a step that fashion labels often neglect after taking sponorship. After the show, you should put together a brief presentation pack with pictures, press coverage of the show and the like. This will allow the person dealing with the sponsorship to justify the expense to his superiors. The better this look the better your chances of getting repeat sponsorship from that sponsor and the easier it becomes to approach new sponsors in the future!

Tell us about your experiences with sponsors and share your tips in the comments.

If you are a young label yourself, you should get your head around the UK based startup WorldOnAHanger. Speeding things up is important for a successful fashion business today, and often this is utterly complicated as you have to manage globally widespread collaborators and resources.

By giving designers and growing labels the kind of structure that they need to grow, WoaH helps them to adapt and to stay flexible even as teams grow across borders and they gain sales agents and supply partners across the world.

Before you go

1. Research trade shows to find the one that’s right for you. Look at the online exhibitors list from previous seasons. There are plenty of fashion showrooms out to choose from and you are most likely to do well in a show with similar labels to your own. This also gives you a great opportunity to scope out your competitors. Don’t be shy to ask the organisers for concrete figures on which buyers attend, better positioning, etc. You’re investing in your booth, and you want to make sure you at least make your investment back!

2. Know what your goal is. It helps with preparation if you know what you want to achieve. Are you there to meet existing stockists? Are you trying to develop new relationships? Who are you targeting, buyers or press? Depending on how important each goal is to you, prepare accordingly.

3. Make sure you have a good team with you. More importantly, have a detailed schedule set up for when everyone is manning the booth.

At the trade show

1. Smile, make eye contact, engage people! I’m always surprised to see people hiding at the back of their booth hunched over a laptop. While it quickly gets very boring to be there, you’ll miss opportunities if you hide away. To avoid getting bored, have a good rotation going so that you can take plenty of breaks.

2. Have freebies at your booth. Giving out free sweets or even just very well produced look books can have a powerful impact.

3. Show, then sell. If someone shows interest in your products be there to help them explore and probe them about what they’re looking for, what else they stock, what their customers are like. If you listen carefully you’ll have all the information you need to make an effective sales pitch tailored to their interests.

After the show

Follow up! Everyone you have met will have met tens, if not hundreds of people. Some of them will barely remember you.

Be ready to follow up with people you meet to initiate a business relationship. Don’t leave them guessing and be clear about what you’re proposing. It’s often tough to get buyers to commit at the show itself. This means that it’s even more important to follow up.

It’s been an exciting year for World on a Hanger. The highlights were moving out of beta and launching our sponorship of the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN designers.

We’re excited that every day more and more designers from around Europe are signing up to try WoaH.

Having more users means that we get more feedback, and we’ve worked hard at quickly responding to your suggestions and making the system better tailored to your needs. Here are some of the major improvements from the last six months.

More powerful sales

Invoicing has become much easier to manage, and you can create multiple invoices and quotes for all your orders. There are also due dates to help you chase up payments and better manage cash flows.

Sales groups mean that you can now invoice from different locations and give your sales agents access to their own orders in WoaH.

Better stock management

Multiple warehouses is a feature that many of you asked for. It’s proving very useful for managing stock as it moves around. It’s also great for managing consignment sales.

The newly introduced stock transfers between warehouses are great for monitoring items in transit and keeping better track of where stock is.

Easier to use

Finally, we’ve made big improvements in making the system easier to use and taking the pain out of entering large amounts of data. The goal is to make all your data accessible in an intuitive way with the minimum number of clicks.

Finally, we’ve made big improvements in making the system easier to use and taking the pain out of entering large amounts of data. The goal is to make all your data accessible in an intuitive way with the minimum number of clicks.

Find out more about these and other improvements in the What’s New section of our website. We look forward to working with you in the New Year and wish you a prosperous 2010!

We’re all really excited to be a part of this. The NEWGEN alumni list reads like a who’s who of London fashion, and we’re happy to be able to contribute something to the ongoing success of these labels!

I recommend you read today’s interview with Julie Gilhart about the EVER Manifesto over at the brilliant Business of Fashion.

Let us know in the comments if you spot any omissions!

1. NewGen. (London) Created by the British Fashion Council in 1993 it was the world’s first scheme to support emerging designer talent, NEWGEN is the most sought-after competition for fashion designers in the UK. Winners are given sponsorship to put on catwalk shows, presentations or exhibit.  Their alumni list reads like a who’s who of London fashion and includes Alexander McQueen, Boudicca, Giles Deacon and Jonathan Saunders – among others.

2. Fashion Fringe at Covent Garden. (London) Fashion Fringe, sponsored by IMG, is dedicated in promoting British talent. Finalists are given a budget to cover their expenses (living expenses, fabric, technical staff) in creating up with a collection. The winner receives business training, industry mentoring and marketing support from Fashion Fringe partners.

3.  International Talent Support. (Trieste, Italy) ITS is divided into three competitions – Fashion, Accessories and Photography. It was put together eight years ago for new talents all over the world. ITS gives its winners financial opportunities, work placements and occasions to have their work shown to a jury of industry professionals.

4. Fashion East. (London) Fashion East is a great way to get large amounts of PR and an entry to London Fashion Week. It’s a non-profit organization based at the Truman Brewery, the creative hub of London’s East End. With an impressive 8-year track record, Fashion East offers financial support to the winners as well as catwalk show production, PR support and expert advice to help them come up with a label.

5. ANDAM Paris International Fashion Award. (France) ANDAM is a prestigious European fashion competition, having launched the careers of Martin Margiela, Viktor & Rolf, Jeremy Scott. It offers a bursary worth 150,000 Euros (2008) and industry support in France. The competition is open to fashion designers of any nationality under the age of 40. Entry forms are available at their website.

6. El Boton – Mango Fashion Awards. (Spain) A joint effort between button set company El Boton and retail giant Mango, with support from prestigious design schools all over Europe: Central Saint Martins, Escola Superior de Disseny, Institut Français de la Mode, Istituto Marangoni  and the Antwerp royal academy. “These schools will form part of the First Jury, which will shortlist the 10 finalists out of the 50 candidates previously selected by the Mango Committee.” The prize is 300,00 Euros!

7. Plus 46 Awards (Stockholm) +46 Awards aims to bring out Scandinavia’s next biggest fashion designer. The sole winner will given the opportunity to present their collection at Stockholm Fashion Week. The winner also gets a deal to sell the collection to one of Scandinavia’s biggest department stores, PUB.

8. International de Mode et de Photographie à Hyères. (France) The Hyeres Festival is an annual competition for both fashion designers and photographers. Eleven fashion designers showcase their collections and compete for three major prizes: The 1.2.3  Award – opportunity to design an entire collection that will be produced and distributed by 1.2.3. and a grant of 15,000 EUR. The L’Oréal Professional Award – 15,000 EUR additional financial support. The Punto Seta Award – four designers are invited to Punto Seta’s production facilities where they are given free rein to create and use any type of fabric.

Although you can’t apply for it, the Swiss Textiles Award is worth mentioning. It’s aimed at designers who have already had a fair amount of exposure, with potential to grow. Every year the award is presented at the Swiss Textile Federation’s event, the Stella Fashion Night. The winner receives a prize worth 100,000 Euros, of which 10%  are earmarked for the purchase of Swiss fabrics.

Apply to these events. Even if you don’t make it the first time, it can be rewarding to stay on their radar and update them regarding your successes.

This means that we’ve been selected from over 1,500 applicants to take part in a one week event where we’ll have access to  “400 mentors from a top-tier network of company builders; including seed investors, serial entrepreneurs, product experts, HR and PR specialists, marketers, lawyers, recruiters, journalists and venture capitalists.”

What does this mean for our users? It means that we’ll be brainstorming how to improve our service to you with some of the most brilliant business people in Europe. We’ll also be learning from the experiences of other promising startups.

All this will help us achieve our main goal: to better solve the problems you face in running your fashion business. We have big plans for the future, and Seedcamp is one of the best stepping stones imaginable to realising those plans.

And, as always, if you have ideas (no matter how far-fetched) for how technology could make your life in fashion easier, let us know!

Big fashion houses use trend books or trend forecasting agencies like the Carlin Groupe, Le Book, View and Collezioni to secure that their upcoming collections will be in line with trends. The cost these services are prohibitive for smaller labels.

Fortunately, there are some low cost alternatives out there.

Trendstop.com is a good place to start. It boasts of accurate trend confirmation, inspirations, and extensive market analysis on menswear and womenswear. Mudpie.co.uk offers a variety of trend services that can be tailored to suit your specific needs. Trendbooks, Mudpie’s sister company, sells books that comes with a CD for desktop editing and online support services.

Another way of looking into the future of fashion is in the blogs. There’s a host of good blogs out there. And though their coverage is much less structured and lacking in the context that trend forecasters can give, they’re nonetheless a good way of getting an idea of what people out there are wearing. Street style blogs are especially useful for spotting trends or just finding inspiration. Here are three of our favourite street style blogs:

• Face Hunter
• Copenhagen Street Style
• Street Pepper

Established fashion labels for instance, are marketing themselves on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, according to an article posted on the Business of Fashion blog. But while these sites might prove to be useful, their popularity with the public may lead to a loss of exclusivity.

A good alternative is provided by more focused social media such as fashionbusinessclub.net where you can link with industry professionals and promote your business. You may also find useful contacts in myfdb.com which claims to have “built the largest credited fashion database on the web”. It is, at this point, still in closed beta but you can request an invitation on the site. We’re still waiting for our invitation!

Iqons.com, a social network with a magazine, helps promising fashion designers get the exposure they need by featuring members on the website and publishing their works and accomplishments. Nineteen74.com is also very useful in this respect, in particular due to their powerful events and announcements functions. Members in the network updated with events, projects and job opportunities.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for more specific information about emerging fashion labels, want to develop your career, are recruiting simply want to build your network without having to put time into creating profiles on social networks, fashionunited.co.uk (international), fashioncapital.co.uk, and manchesterfashion.com are the places to join the discussion and connect with other people and companies.

These fashion focused social networks are invaluable when seeking to establish yourself as a new talent, whether you’re building up your own business or looking to work for someone else. The world is at your fingertips. All you need is tech savvy.

If products are delayed in getting to the customer, designers risk having them rejected. Conversely, if they deliver early, retailers are able to prepare their sale much better. This possibly leads to higher sell-through rates and larger repeat orders.

This highlights the importance of improving business skills among emerging designers. Design colleges do not seem to prepare graduates very well for running their own businesses.

What’s the best way of fixing that?

Going around Copenhagen Fashion Week speaking to managers of brands, designers and sales agents I got the impression that business is picking up again. Buyers are looking to the future. The consensus seemed to be that things will have improved enough by Spring / Summer ‘10 to increase offerings in shops. Risk taking also appeared to be back. Even labels in their first season seemed bullish.

It’s all anecdotal and I don’t have hard data to back it up.  SS ‘10 order books won’t closing for another couple of months. But if attendance figures at Pure in London (2 – 4 August) are any indication, there’s something to it. According to this report on FashionUnited a record number of visitors attended, up 9% from last year. Even more importantly, the number of buyers who returned to spend more than one day at the show was up 21%.

Just something encouraging to think about as you chase up buyers and fill up the order books.

Catwalk Genius is a venture that has set out to solve one of the toughest problems faced by emerging labels: funding.

With their Back a Designer feature, a label can put itself up for backing. It can showcase its designs and begin looking for supporters. Supporters can then pay £11 for a share in the collection being backed. Once 5,000 shares have been sold, Catwalk Genius pays out £50,000 to the designer.

The beauty of it is that casual fans of fashion labels can support their favourite designer with small amounts in a structured process. Meanwhile more serious investors can invest larger sums with an eye on potential returns. Labels commit to splitting any profits made, with 40% going to CwG (including 10% to their affiliate programme) – 30% goes to supporters and labels keep the remaining 30% of profits for themselves.

Another very useful service offered by Catwalk Genius is the online sample sale. Instead of lugging around samples to sell, designers can put up samples for sale with Catwalk Genius. They help promote the designers, giving them a passive source of income from old samples.

Meanwhile, Catwalk Genius keep you updated on the progress made by designers in raising funds on their blog.

Finally, its retail platform, which can help new designers reach large audiences. They do exclusive collaborations with designers and sell the lines in their online boutique. At the moment they feature a mix of recognisable names such as David David, Sinha Stanic and Tatty Devine along with newer labels Fred Butler and Aganovich. It’s well worth a visit.

I got a chance to catch up with Helen Brown, founder of CwG, and ask her some questions.

How did you come up with the idea of Catwalk Genius?

‘Crowd-funding’ particularly appealed after noticing its success in music, sport, politics and many other fields.

After exploring a number of industry sectors that appealed to us, we discovered that fashion was still in the early phase of embracing this approach. It made sense that we’d set up a platform that united designers and fashion fans.

What do you think is the most exciting new trend in the fashion business?

Now, as well as funding a label on Catwalk Genius in order to share in the profits, you can chat to your favourite designers on their blog or through Twitter and watch videos that bring a collection to life or give an insight into the label behind it.

I don’t think it necessarily follows that style is only desirable if it’s inaccessible and in my opinion, these developments make for a more immersive fashion experience.

What’s the biggest challenge facing emerging designers today?

The evolution of the blogosphere means that such commentators are no longer limited to editors of the glossies, but it still takes a good deal of investment and risk on the part of an emerging designer in order to be written about – regardless of their ability. We hope we’ll make it easier for more talented people to raise the funding necessary to get off the blocks.

But how do you figure out the best price for your products?

New eco friendly denim label Reco Jeans did an interesting experiment: They did a Dutch Auction for jeans, where bidders could suggest how much they’d be willing to pay. Then, 300 winners were chosen. Winners were those bidders who fell closest to the average between the highest and the lowest bids.

For some products this approach works very well. Radiohead released their 2007 album In Rainbows with the announcement that fans could download it for any price they wanted. About a third didn’t pay at all. Average price paid was £4, although some paid as much as £20 or more. The marginal cost of selling an extra album is near zero. Fashion is different. Production and materials require an up-front investment. You need to be sure that you can at least cover your costs.

How did the Reco auction end? Most of the winners ended up bidding $100-200, more or less the price range they had aimed for all along. In this FT column Vanessa Friedman speculates the reason for the surprising result is that Reco gave bidders information on competitors’ price points. These were similar and customers probably adjusted their bids accordingly. Thus, it’s very important that you put your brand in the right category, giving customers a clear points of reference when judging whether your prices are good value.

So beware of slashing prices just to please buyers who are hit by the recession. Pricing is as much a long-term strategic decision as it is a short-term one. Pricing is an integral part of your label’s identity. Consider the long-term repercussions before changing prices, and separate what is temporary (economic climate) and what will remain (buyers’ expectation of lower prices, repositioning of your brand).

This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t consider changing it. Just make sure you’re careful about it.