Bogota, July 25, 2024. Bogota Fashion Week, a program for the promotion and circulation of the fashion sector of the Bogota Chamber of Commerce (CCB), has opened the call for independent designers and design brands for its eighth edition to be held in May 2025. The call will be extended until August 2, 2024 at 2:00 p. m.

BFW promotes the creative talent of emerging and consolidated Colombian designers through a specialized consultancy that offers support with tools and experiences designed to help participants sell in the market that best suits their brands, with the aim of making their businesses more productive and competitive.

In this way, the call seeks to benefit the selected brands with a specialized training program in international marketing processes, product, fashion communication and sales; retail and wholesale sales strategies (plus the identification and management of specialized buyers for B2B business spaces); in addition to staging in the Catwalks and Independent Parades sections (chosen after the selection of this call) in the central event next May.

To participate in the call, interested parties must register online, read the guidelines for participation, fill out the form and attach the necessary documents. To learn more about this process, please visit the following link: https://bit.ly/BFW2025.

Ovidio Claros Polanco, president of the CCB, stated that “Our commitment to fashion is comprehensive. Therefore, in this new edition we will continue to seek spaces for the popular economy to have a presence, as we developed in the last edition with the entrepreneurs of the San Victorino sector.”

María Paz Gaviria, Manager of Cultural Programs of the CCB stated, “Bogotá Fashion Week continues to consolidate itself as an ideal space for the promotion and commercialization of hundreds of brands during these eight editions. From the CCB we have built a robust portfolio that each year contributes more to the goal of turning Bogota into a fashion business capital of international stature. By 2025 we hope to have more specialized buyers and continue democratizing access to fashion and related processes”.

The central event, which will take place in May 2025, seeks to bring together up to 110 designers and brands from the fashion sector, providing a comprehensive platform that includes spaces for visibility for their brands, the opportunity to extend their markets with wholesale and retail sales, as well as an academic conference with topics related to sustainability, circularity and fashion marketing.

Bogota Fashion Week 2024

- The seventh edition of BFW was held from May 22 to 24 with the participation of more than 18,165 attendees.

- With business expectations of US$3.3 million, a figure that is expected to grow to US$8 million in the next 12 months, the seventh edition held more than 500 business appointments with the participation of more than 70 buyers from countries such as Belgium, Canada, Qatar, Costa Rica, Spain, the United States, France, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, among others.

- The Multibrand Store, a commercial space with pieces from the most successful collections of the participating brands, generated a total of 445 million Colombian pesos in retail sales.

- For the first time, it included [P u e n t e], a component that promoted the city's fashion wholesale market and allowed the participation of 10 entrepreneurs from the San Victorino sector of Bogota in the Multibrand Store, Catwalks and Wholesale Businesses.

Figures for the fashion sector:

It is made up of 34,772 registered companies (7 % of the total number of companies registered with the CCB).

Of the registered companies, 99.1% are micro and small companies.

By 2023, 5,815 companies were created in the fashion sector.

By 2023, this macro-sector recorded sales of more than $28.9 billion pesos.

In 2023, the sector exported more than $375 million FOB, mainly to the United States, Ecuador, and Mexico, which accounted for 64.1% of total exports.

This represents about 5.9% of total exports from Bogota region.

The products with the highest exports were: fine pearls, precious stones and metals (21.1%), garments and clothing accessories (15.6%), knitted and crocheted fabrics (14.9%).

This sector generates more than 216,000 formal jobs. The activities with the highest number of employed persons are clothing, wholesale trade of articles and manufacture of other textile products.

The 3 localities in Bogotá with the highest concentration are: Kennedy (9.8%), Puente Aranda (8.3%) and Suba (7.7%).