Asos comes to Manchester

The Manchester Fashion Network Pulls off another Blinder evening, as we welcomed the Londoner Nick Robertson, who also happens to be CEO of ASOS.

The Manchester fashion network joined forces with the Circle and Visuality to bring sunny Manchester the founder of As Seen On Screen Nick Robertson. As usual the cities finest pulled themselves away from their sewing machines and Blackberry’s and even the Manchester United vs Barcelona match to attend the occasion. Once again MFN decided to ask David Mallon of Ringspun to chair the event and go head to head with Nick. It was clear from the outset that these two men were coming from two different end of the fashion business spectrum, and it was going to be an interesting evening.

Nick begun by taking us through a brief history of ASOS, explaining how he saw the potential in online retailing through observing brands such as Amazon and Ebay. One key point Nick tried to get across throughout the course of the evening was ‘people need to stop thinking of online commerce as a digital high street’. A point which David found hard to swallow, as he argued the majority of apparel shoppers the main of which are women, prefer to ‘try before they buy’.

Nick then powered on highlighting the potential and scope for online retailing and the benefits of being able to offer the customer a greater range without it taking up any extra retail space. The business man then went on to ‘ring home’ the idea that the internet is constantly evolving and a successful brand will continue to develop with it, preferable at the helm. One audience member, a student from Salford university asked “do you see brands such as Top Shop and River Island as an online threat? MR Robertson answer to this was simple “Look at the figures”. He explained how if people want a choice of 100 dresses they will visit the Top shop website however if you the choice of 8000 dresses you visit ASOS.

The evening proved to be more of a fashion seminar as appose to a question and answer event, as people were captivated by his business ‘lingo’ and suave London presents. As the event drew to a close a rush of independent brands and students with dissertations flocked to the man, before he was whisked away for a night on MFN………………………..!

For more images of the event:

http://www.manchesterfashion.com/gallery/39/an-evening-with-nick-robertson-ceo-of-asos/