CHINESE UPCOMING FASHION BRAND.
Collaboration with VOWOW
After implementing my first intervention into the practices of performance evaluation at Louis Vuitton in Selfridges, I have questioned myself about the real strengths of my project and especially if my project was interesting and useful enough to other companies who differently than Louis Vuitton, don’t have any prior relationship with me.
In this regard, I have thought that I needed to contact a new company with a completely different Brand Culture and Operating Market, in order to possibly find any limitations of my project. Therefore I have contacted a new and upcoming Chinese Fashion Brand VOWOW. Based in Beijing, VOWOW has rapidly become a trendsetter fashion providing fashionable Swimwear, Ready to Wear, and Accessories and has also rapidly expanded their online distribution channels in Europe and aiming to open their first physical stores in 2022 in London, Paris, and Milan.
I have contacted VOWOW from their Instagram page and asked for the contact detail of a Senior Manager and explained that I am an MA Student at CSM and wanted to learn more about VOWOW’s policies and practices related to Employee Performance Evaluation and that I could have shared my findings and supported them in improving this aspect of their business if necessary.
1st– Meeting with Ms. LI – Director of VOWOW
I have been contacted by Ms. LI, Director of VOWOW who was interested in knowing more about my findings and proposition, and I have been invited to meet VOWOW Team in London during their Campaign Shooting event and experience how it is working on a typical day at VOWOW. During this day, VOWOW team has been preparing the launch of a new collection, and the team involved was included Senior Management, Models, Make up artists, Photographers, Stylists, etc.
Vowow staff has been particularly diverse with different nationalities, and during the shooting day, I could see a collaborative and high motivational environment across all the team members. Management and Senior management of the brand were Chinese nationals, the rest of the staff were English, Pakistani, Russian, East European, and Italian.
SHOOTING PREPARATION PICTURES
SHOOTING CAMPAIGN PICTURES
2nd– Meeting with Ms. LI – Director of VOWOW
During my second meeting with Ms. Li on August 2nd, 2021, we discussed the importance of a fair performance assessment and how Vowow could in the future set up guidelines for their staff. Upon previous agreement with Louis Vuitton, in order to better prove my findings and the benefits of such intervention I have disclosed with VOWOW my intervention and findings obtained from Louis Vuitton and tried to understand if this could have been beneficial for VOWOW.
Vowow has been in the Chinese market since 2014 and in Europe, since 2019, therefore it can be considered being a relatively new brand, and did not yet have a clear and defined strategy for the development of its staff, and did not yet realise the importance of this tool which contributes on maintaining a higher level of inclusion.
Ms. Li has been extremely welcoming on discussing this with me after consulting the findings from Louis Vuitton and, on August 21st, 2021, we have collaborated on creating a brand guideline highlighting Employees Attitudes and the Company’s KPI’s and a transparent measurement to make the process of performance assessment as fair as possible to everyone to be applied within 6months or early 2022.
These well set KPI’s, as it is possible to see below, have been adapted to VOWOW’s business procedures, which has aimed at creating a particular trustworthy relationship with their customers and making them a priority of their business, along with sales and stock tracking KPI and behavioural expectations for the team members.
In order to create a better Workplace Environment, we have discussed the implementation of Behavioural Attributes to be followed along with well set KPI’s for performance measurement.
In relation to Behavioural Attributes, it has been found necessary to include:
- Creativity: intended as the ability to engage and think outside of the box and provide solutions to ordinary issues at workplace
- Curiosity: intended as the ability to discover client needs and motivations for purchasing VOWOW products
- Commercial Mindset: intended as the ability to take ownership of the business and maximise every opportunity to build relationships or close the sales
- Empathy: intended as the ability to take charge of the client’s need as your own and build interpersonal relationships
- Agility: the ability to quickly react to sudden changes and respond in an appropriate manner
Reflection and Learning Edges
During this process, I have learned that human interaction can be sometimes easy and sometimes difficult, and this might be because of our own unconscious attitude and expectations toward this encounter.
Generally, I would describe myself as easy-going and confident, but I have also learned that on this occasion I have also felt slightly nervous and anxious at the idea of not receiving a response and being ignored about discussing something that mattered to me personally with a brand that has a completely different culture than me and compared to Louis Vuitton.
At this point, I would say that my knowledge of the Chinese culture was very limited and not completely right by thinking that I might have encountered a closed-minded business and a difficulty in discussing a topic that involves interaction and collaboration with different ethnicities.
This project, I believe has been meaningful for the people that have been involved as it has focused on an important topic that sometimes does not receive the desired importance, but also it has improved my personal perception of others and made me realize that I might be stereotyping when I lack knowledge or information and I create my own idea of a phenomenon without being able to test it. Therefore, the biggest lesson for me is that testing is not part of the risk, but part of getting out of the risk of being or thinking continuously in the possible wrong way.
Concluding, my contribution to LV and especially Vowow has made me realise how strong this project could be for businesses that somehow are not implementing a fair performance assessment and unintentionally not realising that this could harm their D&I culture and work environment.