Ogilvy Youth

This is ingenious.  Juma, a cool little unisex fashion label run by the brother and sister team of Alia and Jamil Juma , turned to Kickstarter to help fund their first New York Fashion Week show.  Kickstarter has funded a lot of creative projects, but using it to get crowdsourced funding for a fashion show is ingenious.  Not only does it raise money, but it signals to editors and press that the label is a less risky investment - it clearly already has a large and dedicated consumer base willing to spend money on the brand.  What better way to decide who to give space and resources to in a department store or boutique than by seeing which brands have the audience support already?  While Juma ultimately fell short, this could be a great way to reinvent the fashion category for young, emerging brands (because, you know, Anna Wintour can only champion so many young designers).

See Juma’s Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/juma/juma-new-york-fashion-week

- Felicia Zhang, Ogilvy Youth