The incubator, which opened in 2001, moved last year from the Upstart building in Princes St to a new home at the Otago Polytechnic campus, where it falls under the umbrella of the Otago Institute of Design.
Upstart will remain a major backer of the incubator until the end of 2010, but a new incubator team is looking to build on and change how it is run.
The three people given the role of running the incubator have all had a long background in the fashion industry.
Otago polytechnic school of fashion lecturer Tracy Kennedy is the manager of the incubator. Ms Kennedy has taught at the fashion school for 10 years and will continue to teach, albeit on a contract-like basis. She has in the past had her own knitwear label and worked as a designer for Tamahine Knitwear.
Ross Gamble and Annette Cadogan will advise incubator clients on how they can improve their businesses.
Mr Gamble was involved for many years with Tamahine Knitwear in design, marketing and sales, before becoming chief executive. He is also a member of the iD Dunedin committee which organises the annual fashion week in the city.
Ms Cadogan is a lecturer at the school of fashion. She specialises in pattern-making, construction and design. She joined the incubator in 2008 to teach workshops in the region and also has her own successful fashion label, Iris.
Ms Kennedy said the first role of the new team at the incubator would be to contact existing clients who used the services of the incubator through Outreach and then work on getting new people in who needed help with their fashion business.
The team was looking to expand the services offered by the previous incubator to include jewellery, accessories and other fashion ideas, as well as apparel. She said the incubator now had a privileged position in that it could call on the resources and expertise of both the polytechnic and the University of Otago.
"It is an exciting transition," she said.
Being at the polytechnic also meant people who came to the incubator for help could also be guided into further education.
