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Nicole Miller has seen the future, and it requires logging onto the Internet.
The New York fashion house — which has hawked its designs for nearly three decades with chic ads in magazines like Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar — this summer abruptly shifted its entire marketing budget online, executives told The Post.
“We’re in a revolution,” said Nicole Miller CEO Bud Konheim, who is now focused on generating buzz on social-networking sites and fashion blogs such as Refinery 29, Polyvore and Who What Wear. “A year ago, we were basically doing zero online.”
Nicole Miller is hardly the first label on Seventh Avenue to embrace the Internet. Still, the company’s sudden, 180-degree switch away from print advertising signals the increasingly decisive influence of online venues in fashion, experts say.
“It’s not merely that it’s a good idea to focus online — it’s something you have to do,” says Jodi Sweetbaum, managing partner at Lloyd & Co., a New York-based ad firm.
That’s partly because ads in fashion magazines, which run upwards of $60,000 a page, are cripplingly expensive for most fashion labels. Nicole Miller, which is relatively large for a brand that isn’t corporate-backed, has an annual ad budget of just over $1 million.
The Web offers pitfalls as well as enticements to designers who are looking to better engage with shoppers, says Ray Graj of Graj + Gustavsen. That’s because blogs are loaded with “user-generated content, with people creating their own versions of the brand,” that aren’t easily controlled, Graj notes.
That’s a risk that Nicole Miller is taking on — beginning with the label’s Friday runway show, where bloggers will be given front-row seats, execs said.
“It used to be considered an insult if somebody was on their BlackBerry at your show — now we’re encouraging it,” Konheim said. “We want people tweeting, blogging, shooting videos and uploading them to their sites.”
Indeed, Nicole Miller is launching a blog of her own tomorrow, ahead of a Friday runway show for the label’s spring 2012 collection. This week, the designer plans to keep it simple, with shots of models being fitted in the studio and thoughts on seasonal trends, execs said.
Nevertheless, fans will also see evidence of a more street-wise approach.
“The old, tortured Vogue-model shot — sucking your cheeks in, looking like you’ve been out all night — it’s all over, it doesn’t register anymore,” according to Konheim.
Instead, the label’s redheaded designer and namesake this summer ordered a group of employees and interns to put on some clothes hanging in the showroom and hit the streets with a camera.
“I don’t have that impressive of a camera — it’s a cute little Nikon SLR,” says Lauren Teslia, Nicole Miller’s e-commerce and retail coordinator.
Still, the casual shoots are expected “to help create a more interactive feel with our customers,” Teslia said.
Thus far, the company’s Internet strategy appears to be working. Online sales were up by more than half this summer and are expected to double by year’s end.