Fast Fashion

At River Island, their aim is to provide stylish, affordable fashion, where their customers are able to pick up everything they need for a brand new head-to-toe look. They provide everything from going-out looks and occasion wear to bags and shoes to match at a reasonable price. By offering stylish, affordable fashion, they will gain a much larger market share than some of their more expensive rivals. Also, if the customer can use them as a ‘one stop shop’, it will mean that River Island benefits by having less competition and therefore, a higher turnover.

Credibility statement: A university of Georgia professor gave an hour-long ted talk talking about her experiences of working and traveling to different countries seeing the fast fashion industry at first hands. She now teaches about fashion sustainability and the cycles of the fast fashion market.

The retail fashion sector is an enormous industry in the UK and there are many branded fashion retailers having

“Exemplifying up-to-the-minute affordable style, its brave and irreverent approach to fashion has made it the number one high street stop for style conscious shoppers and industry insiders alike. With over 300 stores in the UK and over a 100 in growing international territories, Topshop's triumph has been all the more remarkable considering its humble beginnings. Now part of the long-standing retail force Arcadia Group. An attitude that is accessible to all and a bold product range has won Topshop a legion of loyal fans and truly placed it on the international style map - and now the profile of the high street legend is set to expand further with more big stores planned, including a flag ship store on Broadway in New York's

Today, new clothes are sold in synchronization with a consumer’s weekly paycheck making a cycle of about 52 seasons – one per week in each year. This is generating about 80 billion pieces of new clothing created annually which is 400% more than two decades ago. Because of this high demand, a term ‘fast fashion’ has come into focus – those looking deep at this term are both clothing companies and environmentalists. We’ve all

Fast fashion is a business strategy, a trend, and an expectation for American consumers. Fast fashion is a way for designs to move quickly and for retailers to show the latest trends in fashion. It consists of trendy, cheap clothing that can be moved throughout the fashion cycle at an astonishingly fast pace in order to get into stores and outlets for consumers to purchase (Cline, 2012, pg. 101). Not just Americans, but consumers around the world have a mindset of wanting fashionable, good quality, and less expensive products that can be used while “popular”, then thrown away when outdated. Fast fashion is a consumer mindset and a way to move endless amounts of clothing through a retailers’ doors in order to make a lot of money on what consumers

For almost twenty years now, people have been relying on fast fashion, a fairly new notion, which

An assessment should then be carried out to determine who the winners and losers are of the fashion high-street retailers and this has been completed in the same report. Value and young retailers, supermarkets, mid-market retailers and specialist retailers (in particular foot-wear) have been analysed, by terms of sales, to define which retailers have succeeded and which have suffered during the recession. By comparing these retailers, it can be understood what the succeeding retailers have offered consumers over the suffering retailers. Value retailers have stood out in this report as being a beneficiary of the downturn “this growth has been driven by a number of economic factors, particularly consumers’ keenness to obtain value for money and genuine pressure on their household budgets, leading them to trade down on many items. Given continued reductions in clothing prices, fashion has been particularly attractive relative to other household spending categories” (Mintel, 2010). The report suggests that “as might be expected, taking advantage of sales and offers is more common among those spending less last year as well as in 2010, as is shopping more often in value clothing stores or trading down to less expensive stores than usual”. The report ‘Clothing Retailing – Europe – 2009’ suggests that “when the economy starts to recover, life could get tougher for the value retailers and positioning correctly for the upturn will be important. So, while ultra low prices and

As a clothing store which is focusing on local designed and European designed clothes, our products are going to be high-end, fashionable, green and unique.

The popularity of cheap and fashionable clothing has been on the rise since the introduction of fast fashion to major clothing companies. The fashion world has become one of the dominating parts of consumer culture. However, the affordable clothing movement, in addition to the fast-paced garment work, has affected more than just our wallets. Advancement of new practices and clothing availability have contributed to many garment factories and businesses for clothing manufacturing. Nonetheless, it has led to influences in cultures, environments, and societies within many developing countries. Inadequate working conditions, low wages, pollution and furthering regulatory practices have resulted from the fast fashion movement.

The major trends that are restructuring and characterising the textile and clothing sector are as follows: • The European textile and clothing industry is characterised by fragmented production with a large number of small and medium-sized companies mainly located in Italy, Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain (Nordas, 2004), while distribution channels are highly concentrated (Stengg, 2001). • Increasing internationalisation in the textile and apparel sector and the emergence of international competitors (Cerviño, 1998). Consolidation of the sector through mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances (Dunford, 2004). • Sub-contracting or delocalisation of textile and clothing production to countries with lower labour and transportation costs and reduced lead-time (Berkeley and Steuer, 2000). • Re-evaluation of the business models to adapt to the customers´ changing taste (KPMG, 2005). Fashion companies are becoming more flexible and vertically organised, limited vertical integration being more frequent than complete integration (Samiee, 1995). Adoption of new technology to expand productivity and increase competitiveness (Berkeley and Steuer, 2000). • Democratisation of the fashion sector over the last decades (Mazaira, et al., 2003). Zara has contributed greatly to this shift by offering the latest design at attractive prices.

Furthermore, their total sales were £1.528.8 millions and their gross profit was £805.9 million in 2014, which both were higher than last year’s amount, £1.484.0 million and £785.1 million respectively (Annual report 2014:9). New Look is UK’s largest clothing and accessories retailer for the under 35 (Annual report 2014:12). Moreover, one of their strategies is “international expansion” (Annual report 2014:21). New Look received many awards such as Britain’s favorite fashion brand in the Fashion Brands index, most stylish women’s high heels category at PETA’s UK Vegan Fashion Awards and more (Annual report 2014:38).

The fashion industry is one of the largest and most value-creating sectors in the world, contributing a huge £28 billion into the UK economy in 2015 alone, as determined by Oxford Economics (in 2015). As a result of this, the industry is continuously reinvented. New products are introduced into the market, gain popularity by being worn by an ever-increasing number of consumers, reach the stages of maturity and eventually decline, going out of style. This is known as the fashion cycle, a process utilised by forecasters and retailers alike years in advance to predict what will be welcomed by the public as well as the uncertain duration of time for which the trend will last. Despite new garments being innovations, fashion is widely thought of as being evolutionary- not revolutionary- meaning there are visible progressions across styles from season to season. This, resulting in an identifiable fashion trend. It is the development of this trend that simulates changes within the external environment- in particular, transfigurations in: social, economic, technological and cultural factors within societies. It is within this essay, that I will be exploring and identifying just how socioeconomic factors influence and affect what clothing garments we see in stores.

Clothing accessories are generally used for functional use. However many items are purchased for fashion and style purposes. This fact, according to Keynote Clothing Retailing Market report (2013), has brought a great development in the sector. The value of accessories sector touched £2.86bn in 2012. Furthermore, the important increase of the sector that has been evident in 2010 at 26.1% is believed to be a result of the consumers buying items in this sector as low-priced treats. “With consumers remaining cautious with regard to spending after the recession, this sector provided consumers with opportunities to treat themselves with generally cheap items; rather than buying new garments, accessories could be bought to bring an existing outfit up to date. Fashion trends have also started to focus on accessories much more than has previously been seen, with more items bought for fashion purposes rather than functionality.”(Keynote, 2013)

The world has become fascinated towards the fashion. The first thing need to be considered is Fashion; it can be behavior, implementing new ideas on clothing’s, hairstyle, decorations and so on which are automatically linked to our day to day activities. In today’s context, fast fashion has become a trend to a fashion industry patterns yet delivered utilizing less costly materials to guarantee a low cost tag. Many companies have been successful and unsuccessful to earn a trust from their customer. For the matter of success level it depends on how innovativeness they are and also applies the principle of supply chain and logistic management activities for the growth of their