The Profit Pillar
The Fashion industry is a heavily profitable and high earning creative industry, therefore ‘Profit’ is one of the 5 pillars. The profit pillar covers how companies adapt and change through the years to bring in more money and match to new audiences needs due to the Web 2.0 uprise. Companies have already begun to invest in technology and digitalisation, investing in ‘sustainability’ (Naomi Klein 1999). The certain roles where profit is a major aspect of the job is social media, fashion bloggers and opinion leaders. These roles primarily focus on creativity but also view fashion through a business eye. An opinion leader showing this is ‘Lazarsfield’ who developed the 2 step flow theory of mass communication, circulating mass media across followers (Mitterfellner 2019).
The fashion industry is roughly calculated to the amount of 1.53 trillion US dollars, recorded in 2022 (P.smith 2023). In comparison to other creative industries such as the film industry which only has a arrest of USD 90.92 billion (Rosa Escandon 2020). These statistics in comparison show how business orientated the fashion industry can be.
A few examples of the sectors within the fashion industry are the production of textiles, fashion design and the fashion marketing. The textiles creators are performing in a sustainable way and constantly keeping in touch with the environmental footprint and what alternatives are misreading responsible to use. Some of these alternatives are cotton, cashmere and wool, they aren’t particularly sustainable but they have less of an impact than others. The sector of the ‘Creative directors’ is a role anyone inside or outside the fashion industry is aware of as they are the lead fashion designer and brand ambassador (Mitterfellner 2023). They create the brand visionary’s and keep the brand ‘woke’ and up to date on constant changes within the industry. Blogging is a major part of fashions marketing and distribution sectors as its a very classic way of writing about fashion (Mitterfellner, 2019). They have to be in tune with current trends and have to keep relevant by using creativity but also profit smart techniques ( Mitterfellner, 2019). The sectors of the industry although are very separate, they all have a b basic knowledge they stick to.
For brands to stay competitive and known within the industry, they have to keep on top of
– engagement
– targeting the right consumers who are likely to respond positively
– potential increase in a product or service purchase
With roles like a ‘blogger’, if they are a correct fit to the brand, it creates a more profitable brand but also gives a substantial earn to the blogger (Mitterfellner, 2019)