News

Last week we received final confirmation that we will be taking over the www.fashioncapital.coluk website. For those that do not know this site it's a portal for the fashion industry that has been on line for over four years. It has over 60,000 unique users a month that generate 5.5m hits a month...at it's peak.

The site was set up by "us" at London Fashion Forum and basically fell into disrepute over the last few month as funding was withdrawn by the London Development Agency. Dirty spam was posted on the site followed by complaints into senior management at the LDA and eventually it was agreed that we could take over the site and continue the work.

The site has many uses and provides an overview for the whole of the industry. It's forums are particularly strong and every single day there must be at least 300 users on line typing up queries and questions that need answering.

This FashionCapital portal will remain a free online site. Income will be generated by advertising streams and sponsorships and this work is underway now. Any banner advert that is currently on the site will have the option of continuing following payment. Also, the sites Ecommerce website will require payment of £100 (plus VAT) for six months  - a snippet when you consider that the site is currently ranked 4th on the home page of Google for "UK Fashion Websites" and was recently highlighted by The Times.

The team for FashionCapital comprises of Vanessa Cameila right (yes, honest, she does enjoy her job!) who is the Creative Manager for both FashionCapital and its younger sister site www.fashion-enter.com, Ellie Rivers who is the main link for the site as Editor (ellie@fashioncapital.co.uk), Jo Iles is the Moderator for the site, a very important position and we are delighted that Jo is on board, and then there is yours truly! You will see my name on the forums regularly at some horrendous hour of the day!

The site will undergo changes over the next six months and we are just formulating the strategy now - it's not going to happen over night and, as you can imagine, expenses are running high, but already there is significant money pledged for advertising and sponsorship.

There will be regular updates on our Big Bro site www.fashioncapital.co.uk.

Jennifer Holloway