Young talent casting young talents

Two days ago Nadine published her post about the new talent award of Peek& Cloppenburg supporting young design talents. This can be perfectly connected to my Philipp Plein project as in July 2007 he won a new faces award himself, carried out by the german lifestyle magazine “BUNTE”.

By then furniture, fashion and jewelery collections were launched successfully and in 2008 already Plein worked with top models like Naomi Campbell and Markus Schenkenberg. The history of his company goes on just like that: first patented watch tag, shops in Milano, Moscow, Kitzühel, Vienna, Saint Tropez, Cannes and Mischa Barton´s face for the Fall/Winter 2010 collection. Not to forget that he still is the owner of Germany´s most famous and most expensive night club P1 I think one can say that Philipp Plein really made it.

But there is no source telling us how exactly he startet his business, how he actually made the first dollar. I assume that it has a lot to do with luck, nice parents and connection.  Starting next week Plein himself, a few years after being explored as young talent, casts new talents on TV and supports them on their way to popularity and economical success. See how short- dated the fashion world is. One of the canditates of Pleins new TV show Fashion& Fame on the other hand has quite a down-to-earth business story.

David Sievers actually made an apprenticeship as forwarding merchant. Working in the office was too boring for him so he started working for an internet providor. Still too boring was the conclusion of that adventure and Sievers decided to study Biology which again was not interesting enough for him and he quit the studies for an internship in a small clothing shop in Berlin- Prenzlauer Berg. By then he had some first fashion experiences with grandma´s sewing machine which he improved during the internship. Later on he launched his own brand “Ein Löffel voll Zucker” (a spoon full of sugar), based in Berlin as well, with some fashion for women. “8inch” a label for male fashion followed and now Sievers designs clothing and accessoires. Except for the hoodies (for men or women) his pieces are unique. He sells some at local shops or at Dawanda, an online shop. He does not produce large numbers of one piece as this at first is what his customers like and secondly he does not want to require loans. A laudable way! In Fashion& Fame David Sievers will struggle for the leadership of the new label “Goldcut” which comes into existence during the show. This might end up in that kind of success story that Plein had or that one of Parsival Cserer which Nadine told us about in her post A Chance for Young Designers.

So now I more deeply got into the Plein business and explored the business model of David Sievers, taking part at the Goldcut challenge. Lets see if we can find out even more or if other candidates also run their own businesses already.