Imran Amed, holder of an Harvard MBA and former engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, without a graduate degree in Fashion, is the founder and CEO of Business of Fashion (BoF), the leading platform about what happens in the fashion industry.

But how did it all started? Imran’s passion for the fashion industry led him to create a website about it in 2007. A mix of perseverance and a new perspective of telling what was behind of the business of fashion led to its success. The website was about unveiling what was taking place in the industry focusing not only on disruptive subjects, new markets, technology, but also how daily politics and social matters could affect fashion and vice-versa. This kind of digital newspaper was definitely refreshing in such fast paced industry.

Even though Imran kept being the main writer of the website until 2013 – the same year he decided to go after funding – it rapidly grown and became the go to platform concerning fashion industry’s news.

At the BoF you can find multiple features: news that have an impact in fashion from several magazines (if you subscribe the newsletter, you will receive an email signed by Imran with the hot topics and articles of the moment), a podcast, online courses from some of the industry’s experts plus career advice and opportunities. Every year is also launched the BoF 500: a list of the people who are shaping the industry.

As stated by the Financial Times in April 2019, BoF has 1.5m unique visitors a month, and Mr Amed’s daily newsletter now has more than 570,000 subscribers.

Referring to competitors, in an interview for the The Guardian in September 2018, Imran explained why the website keeps on the edge: “Our competitors really differ, depending on what part of the business you look at,” says Amed. “Our events business competes with TED. Our online recruitment business competes with LinkedIn. Our online education business competes with business schools and fashion schools. And our content competes with everyone from Women’s Wear Daily to the New York Times to the Economist. And Instagram. And Facebook. We live in the attention economy. You have a limited amount of time in the day, you have a limited real estate on someone’s phone. So that’s the way I think about it: there is no single competitor.”

Imran Amed is shaping the way people passionate about the fashion industry learn and keep up to date about it and has definitely the mind and vision of a mentor to look up to.