The ambitious Portland Apparel Lab project came in hot a few months ago, with a detailed vision of how it could launch Portland’s small time fashion professionals into a more competitive zone. There was a well-attended presentation of the plan in September, and an invitation fto come to PAL co-founders Crispin Argento and Dawn Moothart with questions and concerns. Based on my own casually conducted, conversational research, chief among the concerns was and is cost.
Initially it sounded like PAL was going to be up and running on a short timeline, but now it appears that things are slowing down. That’s probably a good thing. Argento and Moothart have emphasized the importance of creating metrics for the city’s fashion industry, and having a numbers-based understanding of it as a market for services like PAL’s. So while applications for the program would have been coming in now, according to Plan A, the timeline for those applications to be download-able has been changed to “in the near future.” Argento explains:
Since the September event, we have met with 30-45 brands/designers and we have taken on a few clients under the PAL umbrella for business advisory, strategy and production management services. As an advisory firm, we are open for business.
There continues to be a lot of interest in the greater PAL concept, however we need to assess the market, do additional research on whether people want a platform like PAL and are ready to support this kind of organization financially. I am currently exploring options how to fund a study—in my view this needs to be the first issue [a steering committee put together by the City Cub, of which Argento and I are both members] tackles. We need to define the market. It needs to be done by a third party economic advisory firm which is expensive.
The next steps are to continue spreading the word about PAL. We are currently exploring doing a number of educational seminars about the business end of fashion.
In other words, please hold.
I love the idea of an economic study, which would have the potential to boost the sector in the same way that, say, the craft beer industry has been. And I think it’s important to keep an eye on, and at least in some contexts, align with and be counted among the greater maker/manufacturing community, who recently released a survey report that begins to build a numbers-based profile of its potential.