Interview with Fashion Designer Sanaz Shirazi - Westwood (July 6, 2007) Sanaz Shirazi Collection from Sanaz and Tanaz Shirazi Background: I was born in Tehran Iran. My childhood was spent between Iran and India, and later my teenage years in Norway and England. The travelling with my parents through my childhood and experiencing different cultures has been very important and influential towards my work. My mother's sense of style and my father's love of Persian art and music have also affected my designing. I have a BA in international marketing and Business from Norway and England, which helps in my designing and promoting of our line. My sister Tanaz has a BA in Business and Administration. I have also taken drama lessons, especially within Shakespeare, in London at Central School of Speech and Drama. My work experience has been from fashion, advertising and marketing both from London and Oslo in Norway. The 4 PsProduct: We design gilets, jackets and hats using sheep or rabbit fur. The styles are traditional; they represent us, our history... We don't follow trends but make and design the things that we would like to wear. We are influenced by our Persian culture and our upbringing which makes the designs much more unique. One important issue for us has always been to use fur where the meat will be used in food production. By doing great research and visiting the manufacturers, we make sure that the animals are not injured just because of their fur. We do only use animals where we know that the meat will be used for the food industry. (I stress that fox and mink is not being used) The meat gets used for food production and the fur for clothing. The sheep fur is also offered organically and been ethically made. A very important issue is that we never use fur of animals which are being eliminated.  We saw a gap in the market did our research and started making samples. The most time consuming part was finding reliable factories for leather and fur production. We did several exhibitions and followed by selling to different clothing and interior boutiques. Place: We are based in Norway and London... But we sell to shops and/or online in Dubai, Asia, USA, and Europe. The fact that we are selling online makes it very international and accessible to our customers. In the future we will be selling to ski resorts and to boutiques in Moscow. Price: Our designs are quite affordable compared to other labels in the market. And at the same time quality is very important to us. Promotion: We are doing interviews with fashion magazines, and online sites internationally. We are also having meetings with publicists and stylists to celebrities in the USA, for presenting our work. We don't do paid advertising, and would rather use word of mouth and let the designs speak for their self. Our website www.sanazshirazi.com  Marketing strategy: The fact that we don't use a showroom makes us have low space costs. We make the samples and sell and deliver directly to our customers directly. We have a close relationship with our customers, by meeting them personally and collaborating with them when it comes to size, colors etc... We make the best and coolest styles with the best quality and originality. Instead of using our budget on PR companies, advertising or other marketing channels, we rather concentrate on making the best designs?. The reason we are in LA for the summer: We are having meetings with several buyers of clothing shops in Los Angeles. We are also presenting our styles for stylists and publicists for several talents in the movie industry. Other meetings are with sales reps for our West coast sales, and planning tradeshows for New York and Las Vegas for Winter 08. We are also collaborating with a LA based denim label called Bread Denim. I have a television interview with VOA in July. We are also working on new styles and planning our next trip for production and handcraft work in Iran.
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