Someone’s got a passion for fashion. Photo: Rick Chung

Here’s another smart idea that’s made it to the world level. Meet Byco, the new network of sorts for fashion design. An interesting and completely relevant subject that has certainly become more prevalent in the past year or two. It’s also playing a big role in what we’ve already discussed as a changing industry and world. So what does Byco do? Well, if you were too lazy to click the link and find that out for yourself, it pretty much facilitates the process of the fashion industry post design. Aspiring designers are faced with a lot of challenges once they have a design. A lot of the time, they don’t know what to do with it, because their education teaches them a specific set of skills. Byco steps in to take care of the production of the garment, funding and marketing. Letting designers sit back and roll in the profit. There’s still a profit, but you’re only going to get 20-30%, which is fair value considering that you don’t have to pay for any of the materials or production process.

When you submit your design, you can choose to fund the initial sample, or crowd-fund it. If you do it yourself, the 30% profit is yours. If you crowd-fund it, then 10% of the profit goes to the investors. Regardless, this is the kind of thing that people are doing with the internet and communications. The changing technology and industries of the world have evolved into systems like this, where people with skills contribute what they can do to a project. Everybody works together to achieve the goal, this sort of organisation facilitates this process and makes it incredibly easy and organised.

It’s not without its pitfalls. Of course in some cases, you’d be better off to do it yourself. If you’ve got the skills, know-how and adaptability you’d be better off eliminating the middle man. In the end, it’s the one with the most innovation that takes home the largest portion of bacon. We know this, because Byco’s creator is going to end up with the millions. But it certainly does help facilitate the production process for new designers entering the business. It’s a starting point, a springboard and a platform of sorts.

Truly an interesting idea, one that has been explored by a number of different industries. Crowdfunding has been big in the film industry lately. It’s a good way to find people who want to help make your ideas happen. It lets you find people who like your work. Applications like Byco, however, are less common. It will be interesting to see the future of this kind of networking and how it shapes up.