Lookin’ Good: Mongolia’s New Catalysts, Fashionistas Are Donning Entrepreneurship

With a little help from her friends---that’s 12.0 million sheep, 9.6 million goats, 0.3 million camels, and many, many yaks to you---Mongolia’s annual textile production amounts to some 21,000 tons of wool, 4,500 tons of cashmere, 1,200 tons of camel hair and 300 tons of yak hair. That’s a lot of hair we’re looking at. The hype now is to label a chunk of this 27,000 tons of mammal tuft with a qualified “Tansag Shirhegt” (Luxurious Texture) seal, not for boosting their dead ego, but to righteously capitalize Mongolian fur and cashmere industries. Their underdeveloped marketing stratagems being wholly untouched for years, Altai Cashmere, Gobi, Goyo and other members of the Mongolian Fur and Cashmere Union are now finally partnering up with the Asian Development Bank to fix this up. Their rude awakening? Fast-moving China, femme fatale of opportunistic marketing, sales distribution, brand labelling and imagery. “Made in China”: what a lovely, familiar ring.

As for Made in Mongolia, fashion might become the fulcrum in setting the grounds for that. Now that more and more Mongolian designers are going global with their admixed, haute couture designs, the basics of entrepreneuring are in burning demand. Or it should be. “We have skill and talent,” says G. Ariunna, a business entrepreneurship instructor and clothes manufacturer, “but not enough need for management and marketing techniques.” From what I’ve gathered, the awareness of establishing entrepreneurship is alarmingly low amongst Mongolians, especially when the country is so exponentially developing into a hub of fashion. And most of all, these developments often come with little or nil returning profits. To begin with, the flux of imports is extravagant ever since the Quota Elimination expired on Dec. 31, 2004. With the lift of regulations on textile and clothing trade, the hunk of international buyers in Mongolia all hopped on cheaper vanguards with faster wheels; mainly that of China, India and Pakistan. Mongolia has since then lost much of its domestic manufacture shares. The demise of a self-supplied fashion market is but a promising outlook in setting up entrepreneurs.

The waves won’t stop coming. On top of this heavily import-dependant market, the advent of brand legacies is refracting entrepreneurship towards further desolation. Combined with a 112 ft. wide facade, a ger inspired VIP room and an exclusive “Bag Bar”, Louis Vuitton is of course delightfully enticed by the nouveaux riches and you can’t really blame people for that. The same goes for name brands like Chanel, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry and Comme des Garçons beaming across the dusty UB streets.

According to the 1Q2012 report issued last May by the National Statistics Department of Mongolia, the country’s GDP growth rate showed an outstanding 16.7%, betraying the Economist Intelligence Unit’s estimation by a good +1.7%. Yes, domestic income is growing fast, and coal exports are rising both in amount and value; average export prices were seen surging 56%, up to $108/ton in 1Q2012. Quite staggeringly powerful, Mongolia’s fortified growth rate is compared to that of Kazakhstan and Qatar. And people are hungry for more. What used to be a mix of producers and consumers, now a good chunk of the Mongolian population is excessively gorging into the latest new wave of whatever.

But those are all bits of history. What’s going to happen next? A breakthrough in this cycle of misery might as well be the buzz gathering around the Goyol Fashion Festival. Established in 1988 and hosted by the Mongolian Designer’s Association, Goyol experienced a great epoch last year when it was broadcasted by FashionTV, a channel that attracts some 20 million monthly views on YouTube. The fashion hungry YouTube watchers certainly did catch on---and not only did they pick up the (obviously) lovely fashion tastes, but furthermore on the status and identity of the Goyol fashionistas. As one comment put it best: “Do you think Mongolian fashion is going up?” That really is the question at large indeed, depending on how one comes to define “up”. If Mongolia expects to get some beneficiary return from going “up” and not just struggle with landlocked exploitation, then the fashionistas---distributors and consumers---better start getting their act together.

My hopes for fashionista-entrepreneurs are positively high, especially since I get a great kick out of the fashion scene here. Designers and consumers alike, everybody seems to be hungry for the next new thing. Jesse Itofo, designer of the urban fashion line EasternKowboy & FrenchKhanKhan, shows me pictures of street style deel and “Mongolian” caps (“Great wear for the Naadam Festival!”). There are no trendy-trends here, and you’ll never see Crocs in UB, whereas there’s still a disappointing amount of that back in NY.

Mongolians, donning a ridiculous mixage of who-knows-from-where unlabeled imports and some national garments, are a real savvy fun to look at. I’ll have to say the wild hairstyles are my favourite: one guy I met had a half skinhead with a cropped regent tightly gelled in the proper 60s way. It’ll make Elvis proud. For now, no cornrows, afros or dreads in UB; likewise, no entrepreneuring basics or visionary market stratagems. But we’ll see. We’ll see about all that.

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