An article in the Guardian today tells us that EMAP’s WGSN might actually be for sale. The way the journo Katie Allen has written the piece is as if she’s bought in at the bottom. Maybe it’s just us… Here’s a clip:
Derek Carter, the chief executive of Emap’s communications division, which bought WGSN for £140m two years ago, says the beauty of the network is its must-have nature.
“Forecasting is at the heart of what WGSN does,” he says, citing armies of industry experts around the globe who sift through the latest catwalk photos and come up with detailed analyses and predictions for the service’s subscribers. “To get a season wrong as a designer is cataclysmic,” he says.
Gawd help us
Previously: Is WGSN Destroying Creativity? on PSFK
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Emap may well need to sell wgsn to prop up its ailing media empire. The problem is that at £140,000,000 Emap may have overpaid for the service. Companies such as http://www.mpdclick.com and stylesight have created a similar service for a fraction of the opperating costs, a saving that has been passed on to the subscriber using these alternative services. WGSN no longer has this market to themselves and the other online fashion intelligence websites like mpdclick are likely to become an ever larger thorn in WGSNs side.
October 5th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Well said Fiona. Let’s also not forget that as soon as something hits the catwalk, and thus finds itself featured on WGSN, the chances are that the colour and fabric direction were settled upon at least 12 months previously anyway by a forecaster. WGSN has never been something to base design upon, it’s more of a tracking service for refining design.
October 8th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Yawn, haven’t we heard all this before?
WGSN is a global business with more depth of content than “mom and pop” forecasting shops such as MDPclick.
October 30th, 2007 at 11:29 am