Breaking into the fashion biz: career opportunities - includes a directory of Black fashion design companies - 25th Anniversary of the B.E. 100s - Cover Story

Black Enterprise, June, 1997 by Lloyd Gite

Another source of money comes from institutions known as "factors"--money vendors who purchase orders and provide up-front capital for production. Factors can be banks, private individuals or investment companies in the fashion industry.

Let's say you have shown your line of dresses to the buyers at Macy's and they give you an order for $100,000. You can take that order to a factor and ask for financial backing. The factor will verify the order, look over your company and decide whether to give you money up front to manufacture the line. If they loan you the money, their commission could be as much as 15% off the top of the $100,000 order. But the money they give you can help manufacture the line and get the dresses to Macy's, depending on the contract's delivery date, and still give you some profit from the sale.

GETTING EXPOSURE

While it can be a challenge getting money the conventional way, good media publicity can help you grow your company. Advertising your line of clothing can be expensive, but there are opportunities for free publicity. Whitaker has been featured in several publications, including the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post daily newspapers. "I've gotten great media exposure and it has been really good," says Whitaker, who, in addition to running her own design studio, teaches a class in fabrics at the University of Houston. "People see my name on the awning of my store and they come in and say, `you're the woman we read about,' even if it was done a year or two ago."

"Media exposure is extremely important," explains Jelani Bandele of Bandele Communications Group, a Brooklyn, New York-based public relations company that works with a number of black designers. "The media exposure is what brings you to the masses. It brings you to the consumer, and without that the consumer really doesn't know who you are. It's so much more important for black designers because they don't have the multimillion-dollar advertising budgets that others have. But, adds Bandele, that exposure is difficult to come by. "They'll focus on a few during Black History month, but that's pretty much it. The media in fashion is no different than the media around politics or anything else. Black people are not the primary focus."

Another barrier to the success of African Americans in the fashion industry, according to many designers, is racism. Some designers believe no matter how talented they are or how much money they are able to raise, the industry is still a closed one with a "Do Not Enter" sign outside.

"I think there is some racism, although Seventh Avenue wouldn't say that," says Veronica Jones, owner of New York City-based Veronica Jones Showroom. Jones has been in the apparel industry more than 25 years and represents designers and manufacturers, selling clothes to catalogs, department and specialty stores across the country.

"Seventh Avenue is a Jewish business. They are the merchants of the world and this is one of the areas that they created. So when someone black approaches them to do a business, it's much more difficult to get their support. They support each other," says Jones, who is also the president of New York City-based Fashion Outreach, a group of fashion industry professionals working toward improving minority representation in the fashion business and educating the younger generation about the industry.