Tomorrow Consulting is a business unit of the international fashion accelerator Tomorrow. We provide strategic guidance and operational support across business strategy, product, digital marketing and distribution. Tomorrow Consulting leverages its’ deep fashion expertise and network to build global brands and businesses. My role is multifaceted, including defining the vision and strategy for the consultancy, business development, as well as coordinating the team across our three offices in London, Milan and New York.

Growing up, luxury lifestyle and fashion have always been points of interest and somewhat central to my life. But I’ve always been equally interested in commerce, and my aptitudes naturally lean that way. So while I chose business school, the intention was always to enter this space. In fact, the opportunity of providing a concrete and sustainable life to what begins as intangible and visionary creative projects is what makes my job meaningful to me.

The initiative – of Daisuke scouting interesting, underrealized brands for our showroom – has been in effect for years. It was an organic relationship that has evolved naturally. The relationship was formalized due to the introduction of JETRO, that was keen to reinforce our efforts due to the success of the program. With JETRO, the program was extended: not only were we becoming a platform for select high potential Japanese brands, but we also added a boot camp layer to the program, offering the consulting services of our team – with specialized industry guests – to a broader group of brands that had promise but weren’t quite ready for the international stage.

This project will continue to evolve season by season based on the designers selected, but everything will be in service of the long-term goals to elevate the knowledge of international buyers on Japanese designers, and help emerging creatives get ready to face the needs and peculiar demands of international markets.

The main opportunity is learning how markets outside Japan are driven by integrated strategy and executive planning to ensure a successful sales performance. Sizing, integrated digital strategy, and setting an international tone of voice are the key areas of support we are providing these designers through the boot camps we are developing in Tokyo. Concretely, we are helping Japanese creatives to take a step out from the domestic market rules and open up to the world, focusing on the aspects of their business that would better fit the international market, while helping them filling their gaps.

We are an international company with an international perspective and today work with brands across Europe, North America and Asia. As we get more and more market translation and development requests, our expertise in these strategies is reinforced, making our work on these types of initiatives more effective and rewarding. Personally, I hope to be able to continue to work with ‘underserved’ markets that could use better representation in Europe as I find these initiatives particularly worthwhile.

We think that Poggy perfectly embodies the spirit of the project. His roots are deep into Japanese culture and outlook on fashion, yet he has introjected an international mindset thanks to his long-time experience in fashion, which allowed him to develop an international network and foster his intercultural background. This multi-faced aspect of him was the main reason we chose him as the first representative of our project.

That’s a great question. An equal exchange of value is what we think defines a good partnership. From our end, we are learning a lot about the Japanese market, while reinforcing our skills at market translation. Poggy in particular reminded us how important it is to be brave when it comes to creativity by presenting an incredibly heterogeneous collection that puts many creative minds together under the same roof. Seeing a Loro Piana wool blazer and suit pants close to anime-style, hand-painted jeans and inflatable plastic accessories where the only ‘trait d’union’ were Poggy’s incredible attitude to eclecticism and unique vision of fashion was refreshing for us.
On the other hand, what we were able to bring to Poggy was our ability to provide concrete support and a solid structure to talented creatives in order to empower their creativity even more, together with real insight into how to launch and build a brand in Europe.

We are supporting the designers to engage in a direct dialogue with international customers communities through their tone of voice, imaginary and, for sure, a correct use of digital communication. Of course, cultural mediation is a fundamental aspect to guarantee the effectiveness of this dialogue. There is a bridge to build between two cultures and two markets. In this process, having people who can help this mediation – knowing well both cultures and markets – is the key for a correct translation. We also believe that creativity is a universal language, and often, being able to leverage the universal nature of all creative language is our favourite part of the job.

For us, there’s no more sense to differentiate the markets using geography as a discriminant. We develop our working methodology around this new vision in fact from USP (unique selling proposition) to UCP (unique community proposition). You can find similarities across fashion communities born in the States but with loyal followers in the United Kingdom and Korea. Especially Gen Z and Y are experts in selecting what they like, and geography, thanks to e-retailers, is not relevant any more.
The major difference between the markets is that while in the United States and the Far East business is evolving really fast and continuously changing, Europe and Eastern block markets are quite conservative beholden to the strategies of the other two. The United States and the Far East have entrusted their success to big department stores and retail conglomerates, but that business model seems to not work anymore, as both department stores and retailers are struggling on a lack of footfalls nowadays, while small independents in Europe are struggling for lack of innovation and experience that is provided mostly now by global e-tailers.
The challenge nowadays is the flexibility and the agility for fashion companies to adapt to ‘glocal’ realities not only in terms of IRL retail but also drive traffic from physical to digital and vice versa, and use their doors not only as a gateway for sales but also as partners to engage the community and deliver experiences.

Given the rich historical context you rightly pointed out, and the city’s role as the ultimate fashion capital, Paris’ central role in the project was never in question.

I can’t disclose what’s coming next, but internally, we are really inspired by the next two projects and look forward to continued success with the program.