BCapital: Reconnecting Bogota to its fashion system

Inexmoda, the fashion
giant behind Latin America’s largest textile and fashion trade fair
Colombiatex de las Americas as well as Colombia’s biggest fashion week
ColombiaModa recently launched a new B2C event, named as part of its five year plan to
reconnect both its local and international players to its ever expanding
fashion system. Held in the industrial heart of the county’s capital,
Bogota over the course of three days, FashionUnited took a moment to talk
to Carlos Eduardo Botero Hoyos, Executive President of Inexmoda to learn
more about BCapital and their plans to stimulate the fashion industry in
Colombia.

What is BCapital exactly?

“BCapital is our debut business to consumer fashion event in Bogota,
structured under main three pillars: BSmart, which is based on the idea of
sharing of fashion knowledge and consisted of 27 conferences held at 6
distinct locations throughout the city of Bogota, all open to the public;
BFashion, created around the series of fashion shows, flash mobs and
fashion shorts seen at the Centro Creativo Textura these past days and
BCool; combining all these themes into a lifestyle experience, with local
cuisine, films, shopping opportunities and beauty. We created an integrated
theme which is part of our long-term scheme to reconnect Bogota to its
fashion system.”

Why did you choose to host BCapital in Bogota, rather than the
self-proclaimed fashion capital of Latin America, Medellin?

“Inexmoda is a non-profit organisation founded over 25 years ago to promote
the Colombian fashion industry on both a national and international level.
When we looked at the total spend on fashion in Bogota last year, we
realised that the city alone accounted for close to 38 percent of the
country’s total spend on fashion, the highest percentage of all. But, the
city lacked an event like this linking its population directly to fashion.”

“Then when we looked at consumer spend per capita, we saw that Bogota was
in fact in fourth place, coming after other cities such as Medellin,
Barranquilla and Calli. So these factors inspired us to think of a
long-term strategy to help boost fashion sales in Bogota, whilst
reconnecting the city locals with the fashion system.”

How would you compare the understanding of fashion in Bogota to Medellin or
other cities?

“Well, there is a larger culture for fashion in Medellin than in Bogota, in
the sense that there are two major industry events in Medellin per year –
ColombiaTex and ColombiaModa and nothing of the sort in Bogota. But any
local or international fashion brand seeking to open up offices or
headquarters in Colombia always looks to Bogota first as their starting
point due to its size, location, population and consumer consumption. So we
wanted to find a way to reconnect this to our fashion system and events
like this facilitate that connection.”

“In general terms though, we see the level of fashion in Colombia
increasing every year. This year the designers who showed at ColombiaModa
presented speculator collections and continued to lift the bar for the
industry whilst functioning on a globalised level of excellence and
retaining the DNA strands of Colombia fashion, which is incredibly valuable
to their work. What I saw at ColombiaModa was incredibly positive for the
ongoing development of Colombian fashion.”

Was it easy for you to locate the correct venue to host BCapital
in?

“No, not at all. These types of initiatives always call for a lot work and
we spent a lot of time looking around Bogota for the right venue for the
event. There is also an increasing issue with travelling and mobility for
the citizens of Bogota so we to find that magical place which was
accessible to all and in the right creative area as well. That for us ended
up being the Centro Creative Textura.”

What expectations did you have for the first edition of BCapital? Would you
say that the event fulfil them?

“It was our desire to bring to life our dreams for BCapital, which we had
been planning and working on for over a year. We aimed to develop an event
for consumers that successfully expressed our expectations of reconnecting
them to the fashion industry and built on our goal of creating an
experience that combined the best fashion and lifestyle.”

“Yes, I do believe that we fulfilled our expectations – we held
fascinating talks in the city, we had beautiful fashion shows, we managed
to cultivate the locals who came and encourage them to experiment with new
types of fashion and beauty by putting them outside of their zone of
comfort in relatively unknown area of the city. Although BCapital is part
of our long-term goal of reconnecting local with the culture of fashion, it
seems like we slowly getting there. The city of Bogota was very welcoming
to us and to us hosting BCapital here as well.”

Did you find it difficult to approach local designers with your idea for
BCapital and get them on board?

“No, to be honest that was one of the easiest parts of the planning for
BCapital. Easiest in the sense that we were established as non-profit
organisation 25 years ago to help the local fashion industry thrive, so
with a history like that we have little difficulty approaching the
designers we wanted to participated in the event. In fact, I would say that
from all the planning for BCapital, getting the designers and local
retailers we wanted to participate was the least complex.”

What about your other brand partnerships for the event, such as those with
L’Oreal and Levi’s, were they keen to be a part of BCapital as well?

“That was slightly more difficult area for us, in the sense that companies
are always more wary of new initiatives and prefer to sit back and observe
the first editions rather than jump in with both feet. So in that sense we
really wanted to secure the best partnerships possible and are very happy
we were able to partner with L’oreal and have them provide all hair and
make-up services for an event in Colombia for the first time, as well as
our other partners such as Peroni, Choco Lynne and Punto Blanco. But all
the business who believed in our event from the start where present at
BCapital, which was great to see.”

The designers and retailers who hosted catwalk shows throughout the event
presented a mix of AW’15 collections and a few SS’16 collections – is there
a particular reason why?

“Well, our goal with BCapital was to create the ultimate fashion commercial
event for consumers. We mainly wanted designers and retailers to show
collections that our visitors would be able to purchase in store the next
day, or at our BPop-Up shop, rather than having them wait 6 months to be
able to buy what they saw. And considering that the fashion calendar seems
to be moving away from a fixed cycle of seasons we felt it was important to
promote current Autumn/Winter 2015 collections. As this is a B2C event, the
commercial viability of the collections shown was important to us.”

Now that BCapital first edition has ended, are the plans for a second
edition?

“Yes there is. The idea that we came up with at Inexmoda was to aline
BCapital as the top fashion event for the industry’s end consumer to be
held during the third quarter of the year, in the city of Bogota on an
annual basis. Next year’s edition, which will also be held at the Centro
Creativo Textura will continue to solidify the themes we have focused on
this year and continue to build on them as well. The event is part of our
five year plan, which focuses on launching numerous events to support the
growth of the Colombian fashion industry that we started last year at
Inexmoda.”

Image credit: Inexmoda

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