Seventy-seven thousand dollars. That was the figure Launchmetrics attached to a single front-row seat at a major Paris fashion show in its Autumn/Winter 2025 season report.

That isn’t the price of a seat. It’s the estimated media value of the coverage that a well-chosen guest can generate simply by sitting in it; consider the photos, the posts, and the headlines, spread across all platforms for weeks.

It might sound absurd at first, but take into account the lingering buzz that follows each runway show. The coverage surrounding a show will circulate on the internet for as long as it’s fed attention, and someone has to track it and deduce its worth. In fashion, much of that job will come down to one company that most have not even heard of.

 

It Started… in a Closet?

To trace the beginnings of Launchmetrics, a pivot from the glamour of the front row seats to the modest space of a sample closet is required. When a brand wants a magazine to shoot its clothes or dress a celebrity, the PR team is called into action. Pieces, known as samples, go out the door, but then what? They must track and record who has what, where each sample is, and when it is coming back. Starting with a sample closet in 2006, Eddie Mullon aimed to replace the paper-based logistics system that PR teams had long relied on.

Mullon founded Fashion GPS, and the tool took off. In 2016, it merged with data start-up Augure to become Launchmetrics. The significance of this unification is that it joins the logistics of PR (samples and invitations) with the measurement of PR (evaluating what all the effort actually produced). Since then, Launchmetrics has added other features, such as influencer platforms in the US and China, and in 2024 it was acquired by French software company Lectra.

 

What Does Launchmetrics Really Do?

At its core, Launchmetrics is a platform built to handle the full life of a PR campaign: managing samples, organizing events, monitoring coverage, and tracking brand performance. Its scale in the fashion industry is staggering. In a case study with Launchmetrics, Paul Smith sent out over 600 samples during Paris Fashion Week SS23 and coordinated shows attended by over 1,000 people. The company claims to work with 85% of brands that hold seasonal shows across New York, London, Milan, and Paris.

A fashion-specific system like Launchmetrics is especially useful, as monitoring post-event coverage requires a tool that understands the industry. Imagine Coach the fashion label getting confused with coach buses, or Celine with Celine Dion. That is precisely why a generic media monitoring tool can fall short. Likewise, if a brand appears in a Vogue slideshow, tracking only the first photo is not enough; the brand may appear on the 12th slide, and that placement is still notable. Launchmetrics is trusted by so many within the industry because it understands these complexities.

 

Name the Price: Media Impact Value (MIV)

Yes, Launchmetrics tracks coverage, but it also puts a price on it. Its signature metric is Media Impact Value, or MIV for short. MIV is the monetary value that the company assigns to each post, article, or interaction involving a brand. The value is dependent on who is doing the talking, which Launchmetrics calls Voices. Not every mention holds the same worth, and there is a real difference between the coverage from celebrities, influencers, media, owned media, and partners. Other factors such as audience quality, platform authority, and regional impact all influence MIV as well. Consider this: would a Gucci mention in Vogue carry the same weight as one in the Daily Mail? Definitely not. The mention in Vogue earns a far higher MIV because of its audience and authority within fashion.

For a long time, fashion PR has struggled to measure itself. How can you compare the impact of a magazine feature to an influencer’s Reel? Older methods like Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) and Earned Media Value (EMV) exist, but Launchmetrics has positioned MIV as a holistic, fashion-oriented alternative. MIV encompasses all variables that feed into how much value a PR placement holds.

Major MIV headlines follow the conclusion of fashion weeks around the world. New York Fashion Week FW26 generated $249.3M in MIV across roughly 47,000 placements. Paris SS26 landed at $1.2B. These figures appear in trade press, agency decks, and brand meetings. Launchmetrics built the basis the industry uses to assess itself.

That granularity goes all the way down to the guest list. The $77,000 seat figure has its fair share of caveats, since not every attendee can generate that level of value. But for a brand attempting to maximize the value of 300 seats in a room, the guest-list decisions become determined by their capacity for digital amplification. 

Perhaps most fascinating, though, are some of the new findings the data has uncovered. In the AW25 season, the number of official shows across the four major fashion weeks dropped 23%, with invitees falling by 16%. Despite this, the overall MIV rose. Launchmetrics’ CMO described this pattern as efficiency over volume: as the rooms get smaller, every seat becomes more valuable. That’s the thing about a shared metric: what gets measured gets chased.

 

Beyond the Number

Launchmetrics is transparent about the idea that a dollar figure can’t tell the whole story. A brand could post the highest MIV of the season, but they still may have a problem if the conversation surrounding them doesn’t match the image they aim to project. Launchmetrics’ CMO calls this a brand alignment issue. To address this, the company added an AI-powered tool that analyzes what media coverage actually says, not just how much of it there is. Brands can now track if they’re being described as innovative, heritage-driven, or elegant. The shift from how loud to what was said may be one of the most interesting developments in fashion measurements yet.

 

But It Doesn’t Satisfy Everyone…

Sitting at the center of an industry invites plenty of criticism, and Launchmetrics is no exception. In 2017, Glossy reported that many PR professionals found the software frustrating, citing slow invite creation, duplicate and outdated contacts, and increasing prices. Some sought cheaper alternatives, walking away from the tool the rest of the industry swore by.

That sentiment is remarkably different today. On G2, Launchmetrics holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating, with users praising its ease of use and customer support. While complaints regarding slow performance and missing features remain, it’s a steep improvement in how the industry views it.

The metric itself has faced questions too. Launchmetrics acknowledges that the industry’s initial reactions to MIV were doubtful about whether the numbers were accurate. As a proprietary metric, the formula can not be validated by a third party, so trust is part of what’s being sold.

Software this integral to an industry gets judged harshly due to the dependence on it. When sample records, invite lists, and coverage data all live in one place, it’s difficult to justify leaving. And when nearly everyone else uses the software too, it becomes the industry standard.

 

So Why Care?

As Launchmetrics celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, it’s impossible to deny its influence. From what began as a tool built to automate paper sample tracking to a powerhouse that quantifies what a successful fashion week looks like, Launchmetrics has enabled evolution throughout the fashion industry. As PR measurement shifts from how many people saw something to what they actually take away from it, the next decade of fashion PR will be shaped by the data just as much as the clothes.

Everyone sees the final looks on runways and screens around the world, but few are aware of the engine that enables this industry. The clothes get the spotlight. Launchmetrics decides what it’s worth.