Why Fashion Brands Should Think More Like Tech Companies

Karen Harvey, who advises Burberry, Coach, and Tiffany, explains why fashion leaders must take a page from Silicon Valley to stay in vogue.

In addition, Harvey’s consulting firm has helped brands like Coach, Burberry, Nike, and Tiffany define their long-term goals and develop strategies for achieving them, which often includes hiring new people. She’s famous for her intense storytelling workshops, in which she brings together the leaders of a company to articulate what their brand really stands for and what they want it to accomplish in the future. And she’s the founder of the Fashion Tech Forum, an annual conference that gathers leaders from the fashion and technology industries to discuss how to collaborate and learn from one another.

Harvey has watched the fashion industry evolve from the front row. She says that one of the most fundamental shifts has been how consumers want to engage with fashion brands. There was a time when people looked to fashion designers to tell them what was beautiful or trendy, but this is no longer the case. Today, she says, consumers dictate what they want—and the companies respond. “Technology companies, which are totally consumer-centric, have changed the way we relate to brands,” Harvey says. “Many fashion companies, on the other hand, still have a tendency to create an aspirational lifestyle and assume that if the consumer wants to be part of that, they will just follow the brand.”