How Business of Fashion's Imran Amed Made Blogging a Career

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Business of Fashion founder Imran Amed took to Reddit this afternoon for an AMA. One of the most popular topics of the discussion, unsurprisingly, was how Amed broke into the fashion world and made a career out of his blog. As he says in his introduction, "I followed the corporate path until I was about 30, working as a consultant and getting an MBA. The most creative thing I had done at the time were Powerpoint presentations. So I left this world behind to join the fascinating world of fashion."

Here's Amed's response to one Redditor's query about how starting BoF and how he got taken seriously by fashion insiders:

BoF started as a passion project, not as a business. This enabled me to focus on creating the best content possible, and focusing on the things that were interesting to me. The content acted as viral social objects that people would share, and then spread on social media, which further built the BoF community and the BoF brand.

Regarding getting taken seriously, this was a real challenge. I was a former McKinsey consultant with no previous experience in fashion, so I tried as hard as I could to learn as much about fashion as possible. I am very lucky that I had good teachers (my fashion friends) and an insatiable appetite for learning about fashion and the people who work in the industry. I built my knowledge base one conversation at a time, and this helped me build a mental map of the fashion world and how 'the business of fashion' really works.

The conversation has ended, but if you have questions for Amed you can leave them on the thread; he said he'd try to respond to additional queries later tonight.
· I am Imran Amed, founder of The Business of Fashion, GQ columnist, and self-proclaimed fashion nerd. Ask me anything! [Reddit]
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