Imran Amed: ‘It Is in Our Struggles That We Find Our Purpose’

At Egypt Fashion Week, BoF founder Imran Amed shared the origin story of BoF and reflects on the forces that will shape fashion in the coming decade.

Background: In the 16 years since he published his first post on The Business of Fashion, Imran Amed has seen the fashion industry try to adapt to adjust to seismic changes in technology, culture and business — and BoF has been a leading voice in guiding the industry through all that change. 

But he may never have created BoF if it weren’t for the challenges that he was confronting in his own life. “It is in our struggles that we find ourselves — and that we find our purpose,” he says. 

In this wide-ranging conversation which took place during Egypt Fashion Week, Amed sits down with Malak Fouad, host of the “What I Did Next” podcast to discuss BoF’s early days, Covid-19’s impact on the fashion industry, fashion in the Middle East and the impact of new technologies including the metaverse and artificial intelligence.

Key Insights:

Amed, left his job as a management consultant and set up an incubator to support young fashion designers. When that project failed, he channelled his energy into the personal blog he had been keeping and called it The Business of Fashion. “It was for my friends and family to see my journey from McKinsey to the fashion world,” says Amed. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amed saw BoF’s role as providing guidance and information to those working in the fashion industry in the midst of great uncertainty. “I said, we have no idea what's going to happen. Our job is to act as a guide for the industry as we navigate a once-in-a-century global health crisis,” says Amed. Amed advises companies to lean on local expertise to connect with customers and find success in new markets. “[Fashion brands] need to empower local teams so they can create activations, products, experiences that resonate with customers,” says Amed.Amed believes innovations like AI will change how people work in the industry, though fashion will always need creative people “AI has the potential to impact a lot of the parts of the industry that I think people thought were a bit untouchable,” says Amed.

Additional Resources:

The Fashion Jobs Most Vulnerable to AI: BoF’s Sheena Butler-Young takes readers through the effects AI can have on the fashion industry, and the creative job market. Luxury Adapts to the ‘New Ramadan Rush’: As the Middle Eastern market grows in the fashion industry, luxury brands like: Dior, Fendi and Valentino are adjusting to the change. 

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