Fashion Retail’s Big Bosses to gain from new age of Fashion Intelligence

The 2015 edition of India Fashion Forum (IFF), India’s biggest fashion sourcing, trends, design and retail business event, will be presented by Snapdeal.com on 18th, 19th & 20th March, 2015 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Goregaon (Mumbai). The 2015 mega congregation of IFF 2015 presented by Snapdeal.com will witness International and National brands, business heads, global retail analysts, trend forecast giants and leading designers from the Textile, Fashion and Fashion Retail industries under one roof to share and outline their strategies to optimize the future of the business.

Supporting the mega business event from the forefront will be some of India’s biggest fashion and retail support brands, including Snapdeal.com, Arvind, Inorbit Malls, Infinity Mall, Orion, Woolmark, NIFT, Pearl Academy and SAP.

This year, the theme of IFF 2015 presented by Snapdeal.com, is, “Creating and Retailing Winning Fashion in an Omni-channel Era”. The show will house an incredible mix of iconic global and Indian speakers delivering keynotes, CEO Roundtables, workshops and talk shows. IFF 2015 will propagate a three-pronged approach to help Indian fashion businesses realize their potential keeping the following in mind:

1. Think Fashion Forward,
2. Plan for the Long Haul and,
3. Act with Creative Intelligence

IFF has been propagating these approaches for the past 15 years through multiple platforms including conferences, master-classes, workshops, sourcing exhibitions, globally-aligned design and trend displays to a large inclusive audience across fashion and retail.

“IFF has always driven a knowledge-laden agenda to optimize the potential of Indian fashion retailing. This year, among many highlights of this massive, multi-layered event, will be exclusive Knowledge Series talks delivered by global and Indian fashion and knowledge giants such as The Woolmark Company, Google, Indian institute of Management and WGSN,” says Amitabh Taneja, Chief Convenor, IFF.

Speaking on the association and IFF, Amit Maheshwari, Vice President, Fashion, Snapdeal.com said, IFF is one of the biggest conglomerations of the best and biggest personalities in the Indian Fashion industry and we are proud to be associated with it. This association provides Snapdeal.com a great platform to address and interact with those who have been instrumental in building fashion across the value chain; from manufacturers, brands, large format retailers, sellers and trendsetters. With our unbeatable reach and customer service platform together with business and knowledge leaders of the offline world, we are sure that we can herald a new era for the fashion industry building ecommerce as a sustainable, massively scalable ecosystem that contributes positively to all involved.

The event will also host the 2nd NIFT Alumni Meet featuring talks by senior NIFT faculty. Also offered at the event will be a prestigious NIFT-IFF Certification Programme for fashion professionals. The three-day programme will be open for IFF Innovation Club Members, comprising Design, Product Development, Merchandising, Buying and Sourcing professionals working with fashion companies – Brands & Private Labels, Manufacturers & Exporters, Buying Houses, and Retailers.
Chaired by Kabir Lumba, Managing Director, Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd, IFF 2015 will be centered on four principles of success for the post-technology consumer in terms of:

· Innovation in products
Innovation is the lifeline of fashion. Be it in the next-gen engineering of denim design, or a smart placket detail, if your product isn’t updated, your business won’t grow enough.

· Innovation in experiences
Indian consumers now look for a great retail experience when shopping for fashion. Do your stores generate ‘interest and awe’?

· New brands, Fresh Ideas
Consumers constantly yearn to experience something new. Fresh ideas and new brands do drive consumption, especially in fashion. New concepts add to sales, be it by reinventing khadi for modern silhouettes or developing a specialty jewelry brand. India needs new entrepreneurial concepts in fashion!

· Technology
Technology has touched every aspect of the business from cutting-edge textile engineering to fashion design, from in-store engagement to social media activations, from customer analytics and Big Data to supplier collaboration and more importantly in creating an Omni-channel experience. While technology is everywhere, we need to get the best from it!

There will also be four finely-calibrated exhibitions on fashion ideas and innovations (INDIA BRAND SHOW, INFASHION, FASHION RETAIL TECH, and INDIA SHOP). Together, these specialized zones will display outstanding innovations and next-generation ideas on textiles, retail design, fashion sourcing and design, location selection, and cutting-edge fashion retail technology solutions.

Some of the illustrious speakers present this year will be Kabir Lumba (Chairman, IFF and MD, Lifestyle International), Kunal Bahl (CEO, Snapdeal.com), Sanjay Behl (CEO, Lifestyle Business, Raymond), J Suresh (MD, Arvind Brands and Retail), Khurshid Vakil (Co-Founder & Executive Director, Marina Home Interiors, UAE (based in Dubai), Venu Nair (MD, Marks & Spencer), Shailesh Chaturvedi (CEO, Tommy Hilfiger), Manoj Nakra (Executive Director, Apparel Group, UAE (based in Dubai), Rajesh Jain (CEO and Director, Lacoste), Vineet Gautam (Country Head, Bestseller (Jack & Jones, Vero Moda, Only), Rahul Narvekar (Founder CEO, NDTV Ethnic Retail / www.indianroots.com), Dilip Kapur (President, Hidesign), Abhishek Ganguly (MD, Puma), Abheek Singhi (Partner, BCG), Neelesh Hundekari (Partner, AT Kearney), Harish Bijoor (CEO and Brand-expert, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.), Nitin Bawankule (Director for Ecommerce and Online, Google), Bonnie Brooks (Vice Chairman, Hudson’s Bay Company (Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord and Taylor), Vishal Trehan (Country Head, Forever New), Narendra Kumar (ace fashion designer) and many more.

IFF born alongside the genesis of organized modern retail, specifically fashion retail in India marks an approach to boost fashion creation and consumption in India out of pure passion. The modus operandi is to catalyze the business to think “Fashion Forward”, plan “Long Term”, and act with “Creative Intelligence”. Hence, every year, IFF’s main focus point has been to Learn, Share and Evolve with the single minded agenda to fast forward growth for the entire value chain – from yarn to retail.

Experts have deemed the IFF as “easily the most focused and smartest fashion business conclaves in Asia,” or to put it simply, it is widely acknowledged that IFF provides the finest platform for fashion creators and the retail community to focus on the fast-evolving aspirations of consumers and continuously challenge and reinvent themselves.