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 BCapital, 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