The Fashion Huddle isn’t new

We’ve been doing it for years…

Hello you lovely lot! Welcome to our first ever blog post about how The Fashion Huddle was born…

“The Fashion Huddle” while by name is in its infancy with next season being only the third time you have heard of it, we’ve actually been doing this for years!

I first moved into The Huddle building to take a showroom 6 years ago. A lone agent in a huge building but knowing it was close to Olympia / PURE and Middleton Green Agency were in another building up the road (plus, close to home so I could race back in time for the kids) it felt like the perfect location. Central London prices were too high and Hammersmith had great travel links and parking for buyers. Right from the start I loved being at The Huddle and I’ve been showing there 4 times a year ever sense.

Slowly and steadily other Agencies started to join me there, each having their own separate room, on a different floor, we’d smile in the corridors and make small talk about buyers we both new. First was Magpie Agencies, then Richman Brands, The Year of Agency and Middleton Green. Then we heard that some mysterious footwear guy who all the buyers loved had joined The Fashion Huddle, and Garry from White Wolf entered the building and our lives, for the record, I LOVE him!.

We started to realise that we often had the same customers coming into the building but they didn’t know we were all together under one roof so would often have to travel across London to Brixton or Shoreditch for another meeting and we kept hearing “oh I wish I knew you were all here I’d have booked to stay here the whole day.” And the gem of an idea was planted.

A Gem of an idea…

My initial idea was to have a Hammersmith Fashion Week and have loads of agencies for the week over PURE but actually we realized there were other Agencies who were tired of the central London prices for their showrooms and before we knew it Joanna Edwards Agency, Janet Thurston, Ariane had asked to join our little gang of Huddlers. 

We’re gonna need a bigger boat!

Now with so many agencies wanting to show in the same space we discussed it and agreed that while previously we would have wanted our own spaces and had an element of secrecy about our businesses we knew that being together, REALLY being together on one open plan floor would be the way forward. Yes, we are all essentially in competition with each other, all fishing from the same pond but we knew we’d be stronger together. It was the start of Collaboration Over Competition.

We need a name

Open floor plan sorted, all agents in agreement as to where they will be and ready to start telling the fashion buying community, we needed a name, something to pull us all together and give us an identity. It obviously had the be The Fashion Huddle, it felt so perfect, a number of fashion agencies all huddled together and the word huddle itself has such positive connotations. And so, The Fashion Huddle was born.

Errr, we need a logo?

So we had our venue, dates, name and now we needed a logo. Arghhhhh! How do you do that? Well, when one of the Agents happens to also be a graphic designer you’d be amazed at how easy it was. Chessie from The Year of Agency knocked up our eye catching Red, yellow and pink logo in about 2 hours which was amazing! We launched our communal Instagram account and boy did we shout about it and that little red, yellow and pink logo was everywhere. Within weeks we had over 1,000 followers on Instagram of really amazing buyers and the interest in this new concept was unreal. We all could really feel the excitement about it.

The first ever Fashion Huddle

I’m not sure quite how to explain how utterly amazing the first ever Fashion Huddle was. I found it all a bit emotional. Buyers loved it, brands loved it, we agents LOVED it. We had created something where there had been a gap. Something so obvious to collaborate and work together but there had been barriers as we had traditionally worked alone. It was amazing. I’m not gonna lie, of course you might lose one of your customers to another agency but personally I have gained scores of new customers in the last 2 seasons of The Fashion Huddle and the atmosphere and laughter lifts me each and every day we are in there. I’m so proud of what we have created and it’s only going to keep getting better!

New Website

And now, we have a big bright beautiful website which I think buyers will find so useful. I’m so proud of it and my wonderful team for building it. It’s been a labour of love and if you see a spelling mistake or grammatical error please let me know as I’m not a copy writer but I’ve done my best. I really hope you find our website useful and that you’ll book to come and see us in The Fashion Huddle. We have so many new brands showing and we have new agencies joining us soon which I am sooooo excited about. Any questions please just drop me a line on the CONTACT US page. And, thank you for supporting us so far on this collaboration journey… watch this space, we have more exciting things to come.

Looking forward to seeing you in January,

Big Love

Lucy x