Getting Aggressive
Furriers launched some of their most aggressive promotional campaigns ever in 1995. From work in the beginning of the year to get more designers involved in the trade, to advertisements and direct mailers to bring that fashion message to consumers, coordinated efforts finally came together to promote the image of fur garments.
The Fur Council of Canada compiled a giant promotional campaign including multiple magazine ads, press conferences, Fur Month and direct mail brochures for retailers.
A mega-blitz ad campaign sent 35 tractor trailer loads of glossy fur advertising materials (including fashion magazine inserts, direct-mail brochures and postcards) to news stands and 123 leading fur retailers across the United States and Canada. The Fur Council of
Canada and the Canadian Fur Trade Development Institute, both of Montreal, together produced about $1.1 million Canadian worth of fashion magazine inserts (published in the November issues of Vogue, Essence and three of Canada's top fashion magazines, Elle Quebec, Flare and Clin d'oeil), two million direct-mail product brochures and 500,000 special postcards, plus 200,000 consumer reassurance message cards, videos, photos for advertising and other tools. The fashion inserts, direct-mail brochures and postcards were estimated to reach more than 25 million North American consumers in time for the peak retail season.
For the third consecutive year, a U.S. industry-wide cooperative ad campaign promoted fur in the pages of major fashion magazines. Organized by the Fur Information Council of America and funded in large part by Saga Furs of Scandinavia, it showcased young U.S. ready-to-wear designers who worked with fur for the first time this year. Those designers got involved in fur through a Saga campaign, the Saga Designer Initiative. Saga invited American fashion designers to its International Design Center in Denmark and developed relationships which resulted in over 20 ready-to-wear designers featuring fur in their fall '95 collections.
Fur garments by six of these designers were featured in the campaign. The slogan: "Fur, it wraps around the imagination. A new generation of American designers discovers the natural beauty of fur." In the most-distributed one-page ad, six modeled designs were pictured, by Bradley Bayou, Eric Gaskins, Yeohlee, Nicole Miller, Han Feng and Robert Danes. A two-page spread added designs by James Purcell and Roland Nivelais. The ads appeared in W, Elle, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
The joint U.S. ad campaign combined the efforts of Saga Furs of Scandinavia, the Fur Information Council of America, retailers and manufacturers to bring consumers a look at fashions by new designers working in fur.
Design contests were another way the trade helped nudge along the fashion image of fur garments in 1995. The North American Fur and Fashion Design Competition 1995 introduced fur to established ready-to-wear designers who haven't worked with it before. Each of seven finalists constructed three garments. Pelts were provided by the organizers (the Fur Council of Canada and the Fur Information Council of America) and sponsors (the Federal Office of Regional Development, Quebec, the Majestic Fur Association and the WildFur Council of North America) of the contest. Finalists were chosen anonymously by a jury of fashion journalists. At the North American Fur & Fashion Exposition in Montreal in May they went before a panel of retailers to determine who would receive cash and prizes for first, second and third place. This was the first year that the contest was opened, through FICA participation, to American contestants.
Young Quebec designers transformed used fur coats into new fashion accessories in a competition organized by the Fur Council of Canada in cooperation with a student network, Groupe Jeunesse. Quebec fashion design colleges were invited to participate in the competition, which was a pilot program of an ongoing campaign by the Fur Council of Canada to encourage innovative Canadian fur design and promote the environmental virtues of fur as a natural, renewable product. The accessories were displayed both at the North American Fur & Fashion Exposition in Montreal last May, and at the 10-day International Pepsi Youth Trade Show in Montreal, where the Council had a booth. Groupe Jeunesse is the only school media network in Quebec and reaches nearly 500,000 French and English students in 936 schools across the province. This year the show attracted 163,780 visitors between the ages of 12 and 20.
In 1995, Fur Age launched a Generation X Design Contest to both encourage young design talent within the trade to think about how the customer of tomorrow would like to wear fur, and thereby expand the uses of fur and its target market; and to ask young consumers themselves what kinds of furs they would find fashionable to be seen in. An extensive jury of 17 impartial consumers between the ages of 18 and 30 chose the top 12 designs they preferred from over 50 entries, based on what they would be most likely to purchase for their own personal use. Winning sketches range from a skinny cocktail suit to mink mixed with vinyl to an easy shrug jacket, and a preference for figure-flattering silhouettes emerged.
Winning designs came from: Marianne Albert of Richmond, VA; Thomas Aversa of Cogan Station, PA; Angela Bucaro of Montreal, Quebec; Larry Fudem of Montreal; J. Allen Graves of Beaumont, TX; Haralabos Krikis of New York, NY; Thanasis Krikis of New York, NY; Veronique Miljkovitch of Montreal; Nicolas Petrou and Michael Lund of New York; Pano Sereti of New York and Robert Zicari of Burnsville, MN.
"A lot of my friends have this image of furs as big fluffy foxes or raccoons, and they just don't relate. When I showed them my piece -- sheared down, dyed, with that sculpted silhouette, I don't know if they were more impressed with my design or at the potential for fur as a product. I wanted to make something different, something I thought my girlfriend would wear; I can't see her buying a traditional mink," said winner Larry Fudem of Wolfie Furs, Montreal.
Fur retailers in Chicago together produced a campaign that included a professional fashion show gala promoting themselves to local media. About 300 members of the press and consumers turned out for the October event at the Knickerbocker Hotel. The Associated Fur Industries of Chicagoland (AFIC), which coordinated and produced the event, even hired a public relations firm for six months in order to help promote the show and raise their profile in the Chicago area. Local television, magazines and newspapers picked up on it, and the AFIC videotaped it for promotional purposes. This was the first time in eight or nine years that the 34-member AFIC planned such a gala.
The marketing campaign also included a direct mailer, an educational program with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for school teachers, and an innovative strategy to get journalists' attention: a lend-lease library with fur coats to offer members of the media an opportunity to borrow and wear a coat for a weekend and then write about their experiences. AFIC also worked on ads for cable television, and that was just the beginning.
Global Marketplace
In 1995 the fur trade realized that it is more globally interdependent than ever before. While American furriers have always gone to Russia for sable pelts, now they're making the trip to sell skins and finished garments. Canadian exports to the States increased. The threatened European Union ban on most wild fur pelts sent producers trekking across continents to find new markets. People in countries previously unthinkable as consumers of luxury products suddenly developed a thirst for them.
The Russian fur market truly exploded. Russians produced less raw fur and consumed more of it. Buyers from the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite state became major players on the auction scene, even boosting mink pelt price levels on occasion. With government subsidies to ranchers eliminated, the country suddenly produced only a fraction of the raw skins it used to, so it began looking for outside sources. Its first fur fair was held in Moscow. With capitalism taking hold, more consumers there coulc afford fur. They have money, and fur is a favorite luxury because of Russia's notoriously cold climate.
South Korea held its position as the most influential international buyer of fur skins. North American wild fur producers reached out to South Korean fur retailers and their representatives attending a North American Fur Auctions sale in New Jersey by presenting them with a dinner/reception and fashion show of Northern Supreme labelled wild fur garments. As part of a continued effort to introduce wild furs to the Korean market, the WildFur Council of North America hosted a group of over 40 South Korean furriers.
"They've been using mink for a while now," said David Sebben of the WildFur Council, "and since we know that other markets starting out using mink have evolved into using wild furs, we think this is extremely promising."
Producers of both wild and ranched furs salivated over the emerging market of China's 1.2 billion consumers. Predicting that the country soon could be the world's largest consumer of furs, as well as a gateway to Russia, North American marketing organizations that promote the pelt labels American Legend, American Ultra, Canada Majestic and Northern Supreme took garments and produced fashion shows in China in 1995.
This surprising turn of events came about because the success of China's economic reform began to enhance the wealth of the nation and the purchasing power of its population. China boasted an estimated four million millionaires (in Chinese yuan) in 1994, and the standard of living for at least 100 million mainland Chinese reached that of the people of Taiwan, according to some reports. Domestic supply in China was short. About 40% of the country's skin production must be sold at the auction of China Animal By-Products Import/Export Corp. in Hong Kong to earn hard currency for the government. With the increase in domestic demand, average fur prices rose 90% since 1993. At the same time, China had to import a large number of skins from abroad to meet domestic demand for high quality furs.
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