Agenda and The Berrics are launching a new online media platform with the goal of creating the next CNBC or Bloomberg for the industry.
Called Agenda Emerge, the site will eventually post new content everyday, mostly focused on video profiles of creative and entrepreneurial figures behind the brands.
Agenda Emerge started as a conference series showcasing influencers in the youth culture space. The conferences will continue, and will be an extension of the new online platform.
While The Berrics has traditionally focused on the skate world, it will broaden its scope in the new venture. Both The Berrics and Agenda believe the line between youth culture and lifestyle will continue to blur.
Aaron believes content marketing is the future, and he has cut most of Agenda’s traditional advertising budget to fund this new project. Brands will not be charged a fee to be profiled.
The website launched today, and the first people profiled are the Cormack brothers of Herschel Supply Co.
Aaron answered some questions for us about the new venture.
Why do this?
Aaron Levant: We are doing this because we have always been evolving over the past 13 years and I’m constantly pushing what Agenda is. I don’t consider us just a “trade show” company – I believe we are so much more than that.
At Agenda we are not so concerned with just selling empty squares of space to brands, we spend our days thinking about how we can drive more value to our customers and the industry as a whole to stimulate business for everyone.
We are a relationship-building platform and a community for discovering new ideas, products and services. Launching this media brand in conjunction with the shows allows us to deepen the engagement, and share ideas and knowledge between Agenda and everyone in our ecosystem.
Over my 15-plus years in the apparel industry, the single thing I’m most proud of is launching the Agenda Emerge conference in 2013. This event is a unique way for us to share the knowledge and the access we have through Agenda not only with the members of the Agenda community who work in the industry, but also with the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs.
Our industry has so many amazing business and human interest stories and the conference and now the media launch allow us to tell these stories in a bigger way to a much larger audience then just the 800 people who could come see the Emerge conference in person.
We plan to reach millions of people around the world each month with this platform once we get up to speed. Long term, Agenda plans to not only be the most meaningful fashion B2B platform in the world, but also to be a thought leader and the definitive source for information about creative entrepreneurialism.
What will be the pace of new profiles?
Aaron Levant: Once we get up to speed over the next six months, we plan to release original content every day, five days a week. The videos will be a range of in-depth profiles shot on location at brand headquarters, full-length Emerge Conference presentations and exclusive backstage interviews from the conference.
The content will be distributed not only on our Agenda Emerge web page but also on social media channels and other third party media outlets. We actually believe more views will be generated from embedded content on other publishers web pages then our own. The content will be aimed at consumers as well as industry members at the same time.
Do you consider it an added service for brands that exhibit at Agenda or are you envisioning that the site will become another revenue center?
Aaron Levant: We will not be charging any brands to take part in this content. It’s all about increasing the value proposition we offer to our customers, and setting ourselves apart from other traditional trade show companies.
But the content will not be limited to just brands that exhibit at Agenda. We will be covering anything we feel is interesting and relevant to our audience. This could range from brands that aren’t in the wholesale business, retailers, disruptive technologies, and innovation in manufacturing, all the way to consumer products that are not even related to clothing at all. Basically if we think it’s cool, we will be covering it, regardless of the subject matter.
We do see an opportunity long term to engage non-endemic brands as sponsors of this platform, but not in our launch phase. For the Emerge conference companies like Project Cobalt, which Pepsi owns, have been sponsoring our events, and they funded our free educational workshop for 700 kids who were interested in getting involved in the apparel industry. We see more non-endemic companies like this supporting our efforts as we transition into the online space long term.
How long does it take to produce the profiles?
Aaron Levant: The time really varies. It could take as little as a few hours for what we would call a Lo-Fi piece, and as much as a few months of on-and-off filming, traveling and editing to do a longer Hi-Fi, in-depth documentary series piece.
The team at The Berrics is the best at what they do, and that’s why we wanted to partner with them on this project. Their bandwidth and quality for producing original content is second to none, and I’m really excited to see what we can create together.
