Financial statements presented at the iD Dunedin Fashion Incorporated Society’s annual meeting yesterday showed the organisation went from a net profit of $124,126 in 2015 to a net deficit of $54,774 for the year ended June 30, 2016.
While income dropped from $595,450 to $525,825, expenditure increased from $471,324 to $580,599.
Chairwoman Cherry Lucas said the result was disappointing.
"It’s what I would consider a significant loss for the year."
She said the result "boiled down" to lower-than-expected ticket sales, caused by the event coinciding with St Patrick’s Day and Otago Anniversary weekend.
iD Dunedin Fashion Week celebrated the city’s fashion creativity and distinct style from March 12-20 this year.
"We thought that with Dunedin’s reputation of being slow to buy tickets, that more would come out of the woodwork as the event drew closer, but that wasn’t to be the case.
"By that point, we had made decisions in relation to production expenses that we couldn’t mitigate."
She said at that point, it was too late to find a further sponsor to cover the costs.
"It was an unfortunate situation for us."
She said the increase in expenses was partly due to the committee’s decision to invest in launching the event in Auckland and upgrade the street banners.
The rising costs of suppliers, which were passed on to the society, was also a factor, she said.
"The society still has healthy reserves which will allow us to continue to plan for the future, and we have already started looking at ways that we can do things smarter, and ways of getting new revenue streams."
During the annual meeting, Ms Lucas was re-elected chairwoman, and Tanya Carlson, Margo Barton, Sara Munro, Darryl McNamara, Simon Eddy, Emma Hunter and Mark Wilesmith were elected to the society’s executive.