THAKOON’S NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE UPCOMING SEASON.

Thakoon Panichgul’s new fashion dynasty is flourishing into a new season with a ‘designer fashion now’ strategy. Recently profiled in a Business of Fashion exclusive as “The Second Coming of Thakoon,” the creative designer is teaming up with the president of his company, Lucy Yi, and their primary investor, Vivian Chou, to launch the next iteration for the brand.

Thai native Thakoon Panichgul launched his brand years ago in New York City, with designs favouring a flirty, romantic angle, quickly earning him vast worldwide critical appraisal. A businessman at heart, and backed by his business studies prior to his fashion life, Thakoon has always mentioned the importance of thinking analytically and presenting something that his retailers will proudly stock, and that his consumers will want to buy. He thinks about the who, what, why, when, where, and how – the secret recipe to his success so far. This quality possessed by Thakoon is actually pretty rare for a designer so creative, whose works are driven by emotion. This is what makes Thakoon special. He is able to create beautiful works of art, and think analytically enough to market them to the right clientele at the right time.

Thus, Thakoon just announced his new plans for the fall – to reboot his eponymous brand. But just how does he plan to do this? The designer told Business of Fashion in New York City that he had been “feeling a bit of a frustration in the past couple years,” and that, while he was “in control of what vision [he] was putting out onto the runway,” it was still really almost fair game for anybody else. “There were all these differences in perception of the brand and ultimately, for me, it was getting very confusing. It was me looking at the landscape and saying, ‘What does Thakoon stand for? It doesn’t stand for much,” he told them. So he took the risk of taking a step back, reanalyzing his model, and curating a second coming.

Together with a Hong Kong-based investment company, Vivian Chou’s Bright Fame Fashion, Thakoon is launching his new business model just in time for the Fall season. Vivian Chou, conveniently the daughter of a Hong Kong-nese billionaire in the textile industry (Silas Chou), bought out a majority stake of the brand just last year. Together with Thakoon and the company’s president, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with, adopting a luxury designer fashion direct-to-consumer model. This implies that they are pulling out of all major e-commerce hubs (think Net-A-Porter, YOOX, MyTheresa, etc.), and retailing exclusively on Thakoon’s redesigned website and e-boutique. Thakoon also just announced that his first flagship boutique is set to open on Wooster Street in Soho later this month.

These changes are all set to take place within the next few weeks, and we’ll see if his innovative new business model will be all that it promises to be, living up to the whimsical beauty of his designs.

Read the full exclusive over at Business of Fashion.

Thakoon is available exclusively at select luxury retailers worldwide, from LaPrendo in Singapore, to Maria Luisa in Paris, to D-mop in Hong Kong.

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