Fashion Education Moving-Up in Business Importance

MBA course teaches design's importance: Hold onto your Jimmy Choos. A fashion class is making its debut next week at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (a top-three graduate school in the nation.) The course, a first of its kind at the business school, will teach MBAs how to manage the fashion component necessary to launch and sustain a successful product, said Steven Fischer, the instructor who created the course. There will be no talk of seams and fabrics here. Rather, students will learn how fashion can become an integral part of such mundane products as cell phones and pens. "There's a fashion component to almost every product that we buy, and this drives consumer behavior," Fischer said. Not long ago, it was outlandish to consider making a pink computer or a cobalt blue washing machine. Not anymore. But for companies to compete at the fashion level, they have to introduce new products at twice the rate of their rivals, Fischer said. That leads to challenges on the management and the supply-chain side. Language [between project-managers and creatives] is another barrier. "Management operates in a linear world, and designers and fashion people operate in a non-linear world," said Fischer. "Their ways of decision-making and problem-solving are quite different." Nineteen MBAs will take part in the class called "Managing the Strategic Value of Fashion and Products." The course is part of the Segal Design Institute, which was created last year with funding from Crate & Barrel founders Gordon and Carole Segal. Experts ranging from General Motors Corp.'s head of design to a Pantone Inc. color expert are slated to speak in the class. When the Segal Design Institute was unveiled, visionary merchant and Kellogg MBA Gordon Segal said how much companies need graduates who have been exposed to principles of design. "Design is probably the biggest competitive advantage the United States has in a rapidly changing and highly competitive world," he said at the time. Fashion and luxury clubs are popping-up at business schools around the world, from Harvard to Columbia to London Business School. These are the latest signs that professional general managers are playing a more prominent role in the fashion and luxury industry. Before the emergence of major luxury groups, first LVMH, and then Gucci Group and Richemont, many fashion and luxury businesses were a family affair -- and this is still the case for many brands, most notably in Italy. But, with more and more luxury IPOs and the shift towards managing luxury brands within a portfolio, has also come the need for CEOs who are well versed in brand management, investor relations and supply chain optimization.
However, professional managers in fashion do need to be cut from a different cloth -- so to speak. They also need to be respectful of the creative process and understand the unique motivations of the creative talent which underpins the success of any fashion business. For example, it must be understood [by management] that if you suppress the designers-creativity, you are left with very little. A great supply chain, magnificent investor relations and a beautiful brand are not of much use in fashion if you don't have an equally compelling product.