Louise & Izzy

We have Louise and her boyfriend Izzy over to dinner with Christian and Sonnet's friend and work colleague Oriel. I met Louise, via Duane, in February at her fashion show in Covent Garden and we have talked a few times about ways to commercialise her runway success beyond Top Shop. In short, fashion design is a tough business. She tells me when 16 and considering university, it was going into knits or physics. Izzy, meanwhile, is a big-bearded dude from Croatia who splits his time between New York and London managing a handful of up-and-coming or established 'head-banger' bands; he does this in partnership with Sony and knows his way around the music business. We have a few references in common from the summer I spent at EMI Music while at Columbia Business. In 1996 nobody talking about the Internet. Life was good. Life was great! Back then it was a good business to be in since the record labels vertically integrated. By the late 1980s there were tens of hundreds of platinum records (500,000 sold per year). Say good-bye to all that, boy. In 2009, there were nine platinum albums. When Napster and free-downloading arrived, music fans could give a rat's ass about the legality of piracy. Most young people have never paid for a record. There's the future of the industry, dude. The model remains muddled while live performance ever more important - which is Izzy's business.