The Fashion Industry Comes To WINTEC

MEDIA RELEASE
October 29 2007
For Immediate Release

The Fashion Industry Comes To WINTEC

Wintec’s renown School of Media Arts has announced its newest diploma in the exciting industry of Fashion. The School is well connected to the creative industries and is to offer a business focused programme with highly experienced staff and a fully equipped workroom for students to begin their careers in the industry.

Head of Wintec’s School of Media Arts, Margi Moore said “We have been thrilled at the response from local industry and have managed to get together an advisory board that has a wealth of experience”.

She said extensive research was undertaken with the fashion industry, which established that businesses were requiring students to graduate with a more rounded understanding of how the business side of fashion works. Wintec listened and now the course is not only going to teach students the basics of construction, pattern making and design, but is also going to include modules covering topics such as marketing, the New Zealand and International business environments enabling students to get to grips with actual dilemmas they are going to face in the job market such as:

• If I got a job with a clothing company that designs its garments here, but then gets them manufactured in China how is this going to work given that I don’t speak Chinese?

• We have a fabulous range of garments, but we want to start exporting to the Northern Hemisphere, how do would I do it?

• I want to start my own fashion label but need to find out why people would even want to buy my clothes and who my target market is going to be?

The advisory committee is made up of local designers and manufacturers such as Annah Stretton from Stretton Clothing Co. Ltd, Miranda Dawson from Nyne, Aroha Wikotu from Shikoba Clothing and Jillian Thompson from Jillang Clothing. Local Director of Sport and Uniform Ian Johnson and Sally Fitzpatrick from Step Ahead also lend their manufacturing experience, along with Sharlene Camp from www.truly.co.nz, Jenny Mangan from Hamilton Girls High and Donna Whittle from Fashion Personnel.

Project manager Sharlene Camp was educated at Otago University in Marketing and a minor in Psychology, Sharlene specialises in the area of consumer behaviour. As the General Manager of the highly successful Dunedin Fashion Incubator she assisted fashion companies with the business side of the fashion industry, covering topics such as marketing, exporting, selling, finance and production which included helping designers getting their collections shown at New Zealand Fashion Week and exporting across the ditch to Australia.

Prior to the Incubator, Sharlene worked for Tamahine Knitwear as the Marketing Manager looking after diverse brands such as Dot Com, MacKenzie Country, All Blacks Knitwear, Katie Cullen and a variety of house brands.

“This exciting new course is taking applications now with priority given to those received prior to 30 November 2007 as we expect the course to fill quickly with only 18 spots,” Ms Moore said. The programme is subject to external approval which is expected any day.

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