In the fast moving world,where techlogy changes everyday and new inventions take place we see ourself surrounded with the term called fast fashion.
By Kritika Arora
Fast fshion can be said to the rapid change in the fashion due to the huge demand,easy production and easy availability of resource. Consumers are relay to spend on discretionary items, and when they do, they expect fashion, quality and low cost items. Fast fashion is a contemporary term used by fashion retailers to acknowledge that designs move from catwalk to store in the fastest time to capture current trends in the market. The apparel products are designed and manufactured quickly and cheaply to allow the mainstream consumer to take advantage of current clothing styles at a lower price. If we investigates into the fast fashion industry worldwide, specifically on Zara, H&M and UNIQLO with respect to efficient supply chain management, scarce value creation, low costs promotions and positioning strategy, supported by comparisons between several typical well-known fast fashion brands.
The traditional marketing and management of fast fashion industry is experiencing a revolution because of the emerging of e-commerce. Since the birth of e-commerce. businesses have been able to make use of the Internet in reducing costs associated with purchasing, managing supplier relationships, streamlining logistics and inventory, and developing advantage and successful implementation of business re-engineering. E-commerce allows companies to improve communications within the supply chain and enhance service offering, thus providing chances for competitive differentiation. That may explain why so many online retailing companies merged in india recently, such as amazon,flipkart,myntra etc. |
The philosophy of quick manufacturing at an reasonable price is applied to large global retailers such as Zara, H&M, Gap,Topshop etc. Zara is a specialist fashion chain and an important example of a fast fashion retailer . It belongs to Inditex, one of the largest distribution groups in the world, which operated 1558 stores in 45 countries out of which nearly 550 were Zara stores. 46% of the group‘s sales were from Spain with France as the largest international market. Zara generated 73.3% of the group‘s sales and 60% of the Zara sales were from its products for women. Zara changes it stock in every 3 weeks, in all its outlet all over the world. Five years ago only Zara followed such a strategy. Zara's designers follow fashion trends closely. In general, a typical clothing company manufacturing in Asia could take six to nine months to get a new design into the shops. With a strong logistics system, an entirely new Zara garment takes about five weeks from design to delivery, while a new version of an existing model can be in the shops within two weeks. In a typical year, Zara launches some 11,000 new items, compared with the 2,000-4,000 from companies like H&M or Gap.
if we see the stastic of online marketing in india , we will notice that more than 50% of sales is of apparel, accesorries and footwear. As the trend is changing people like to shop at home rather than going out and search of products they need. Now people have options to buy anything the want or they desire that to at a click. But at such a fast phase we are ignoring the fact that we are chosing unsusutainable fashion. Fast fashion have given the oppurtunities to people to buy things that they don not need. In most of these factories basic human rights are voiltaed, environment is being harmed at the same time. It is now the time that we need to shift towards slow fashion or sustainable fashion because we need to understand that fashion is just not about capturing trend. |