Episode 033: Simon Lock
Episode 33 of The Blank Canvas Podcast with Simon P Lock.
Simon P Lock is the visionary entrepreneur who put Australian fashion on the map when he founded Mercedes Australian Fashion Week.
He was the champion of Australian designers, well before it was fashionable and he showed the world that that sophisticated fashion could come out of Australia. The success of this event lead to Simon holding senior management positions in a number of other international fashion weeks that sprung up following the Australian success; Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Pakistan, India and the long established - New York Fashion Week.
When the GFC hit in 2008, and Australia’s Fashion Week experienced a dramatic decline in attendance of international retail buyers, Simon embraced new technology to deliver fashion week digitally; this included the world’s first live stream fashion show, the first website for a fashion week and early adoption of bloggers ands social media channels
The impact of the digital revolution and other global economic factors disrupted to traditional business channels and the Fashion week schedules. Ahead of the curve once again, Simon, along with his wife Kirstin, created ORDRE - an online platform to facilitate the management of luxury wholesale networks globally through the presentation of designers seasonal collections via virtual showrooms. Simon developed 360° data capture technology as the cornerstone of the platform.
They knocked on doors for 4 years, slowly building the platform and clientele, then once Covid hit in 2020, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing - pretty well all the major luxury designers have come on board - Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Chloe, Loewe, Balmain, Gucci, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and many more.
Simon says the company is on track to generate revenues of around $13M Aussie $ annually and contribute to generating hundreds of millions of dollars of wholesale orders for its clients.
The fashion world is a fickle one but Simon has certainly navigated path a successful path and take a lot of other people with him.
https://www.instagram.com/simonplock/
https://www.instagram.com/ordreofficial/
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THE BLANK CANVAS TEAM
Produced by Lee Rogers & Rien MacDonald.
Audio support by Jason Murphy/GASinc
Music by Rodrigo Enrique Bustos.