Designers’ Lounge, a new generation Fashion Marketing/PR Project in Nigeria and spreading across the West African region has officially unveiled plans for the year 2011. Building on the achievements of 2010, when the project kicked-off with events that were focused on showcasing and marketing emerging fashion brands from Nigeria, the project is exploiting new grounds.

The Fashion Sale Meets Party event, with its 2 editions last year, has worked with over 28 Designers including Marayah O, Ejiro Amos Tafiri, Effeci Clothing, TT Dalk, Kola Kuddus Couture among others, creating a showcase platform for these brands to promote their designs to the fashion market, via its media partnerships with print, online and electronic media outfits. This year, the Project would be focusing on 4 new platforms, to propagate its mission. These include Merchandising and Distribution, Product Development, Events Marketing, and TV/ PR.

In the area of Merchandising and Distribution, Designers’ Lounge will focus on developing online and real-time fashion marketing platforms, which would focus marketing exclusively, made by Nigerian designer pieces. According to its CEO, Muyi’ Olaitan, “We have discovered from our research and understanding, that a lot of emerging fashion brands face the challenge of  marketing and distribution, and that also hinders their drive to enhance productivity”.

Designers’ Lounge is currently working in conjunction with a collection of designers, in the areas of product development. The Project is creating products, making recommendations for existing brands and challenging the status quo, via its “You Need Your Signature” campaign. The campaign promotes the need for emerging designers to create unique pieces, which in return stands as their brand identity, as opposed to the current trend of making pieces out of materials, fabrics and styles that fail to differentiate labels.

Abuja, Accra and London would be hosting the signature “Fashion Sale Meets Party” event his year. The first edition of the event would be holding in Abuja in March and organisers have promised that it would be a unique experience. www.AmeyawDebrah.com is currently working with DL, to create the Accra Experience in May.

For TV/PR, awareness has kicked-off to promote the upcoming TV project of Designer’s Lounge, which is a short film/documentary titled, “Fashion from the Motherlan”. The Documentary would be focusing on showcasing a collection of designers, an exclusive behind the scene access to their production units, celebrating their creativity and design process, highlighting the challenges facing the designers and also speaking with major industry players, on ways to move the industry forward. This Documentary would be shot in March, and would be directed by award winning Creative Director, Yinka Obebe.