Industry Analysis Project - Specialty Retail Industry

Marketing. Because of the large number of suppliers selling similar products, apparel-retail firms must stimulate demand with attractive store layouts, colorful product offerings, and various sales promotions.

China’s underdeveloped infrastructure, in particular the land transport system and connection between different forms of transportation, slowed down distribution, increased logistic costs, and finally hindered expansion into rural regions (p.13). As a result of this slow transportation, Wal-Mart’s two distribution centers couldn’t serve the entire country adequately. On the other hand, these distribution centers were significantly underused due to small amount of stores. Consequently, the retailer couldn’t benefit from cost saving through its distribution approach (p.14). Furthermore, communication with the retailer’s 15,000 local suppliers was inefficient and costly due to the lack of an information-technology network (p.14).

Of the hundreds of named brand clothing that form part of the retail and fashion industry I chose to compare, for my analysis, Abercrombie & Fitch, Forever 21, American Eagle, and H&M. These stores are prominent, well-known for selling apparel, shoes, and accessories by the means of offering sales and promotions to their customers. This is a clever strategy for attracting customers, allowing them to believe that they bought goods at affordable, convenient prices – and not to mention the prestigious name prescribed to the clothing brands. Using keyhole.co as my main source, I obtained relevant and valuable information regarding the status of these brands. My intentions were to compare a period of 14 days, however, due to the limited access that I received from my free trial, the program only allowed me to see fewer of the dates than I anticipated. I want to take this opportunity and mention ahead of time that due to the various and distinctive products that are sold from these stores, when looking for the “spending capacity” I decided to focus on shirts/ jeans for men and women and compare the prices among them since each of these retailers carry those items and as a way to make this report easier to contrast and comprehend. Also, when approaching the section of “setting”, I screen-shotted some of the images on Instagram and made them into a collage to separate the type of clothes and trends that each of these brands sell currently. In the following modules

I have one question regarding the retail merchandising minor. Am I not eligible to pick up a retail merchandising minor since I am a student in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences? If not, is there a possible reason for an exception since I know I can potentially see myself in a retail merchandising career after

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

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the nature of the U.S. retail industry changed when large-scale mass retailers had considerable power over their suppliers, which 3 main chains controlled 70% of the discount retailer market and increased to 80% by 1997.

The grocery retail industry worldwide has grown in recent years to become one of the most intensely competitive industries due to the continuous amounts of new entrants. A grocery retailer is one that sells food and other general household items. Hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters and small grocery retailers are all under the grocery retail umbrella. Between 2003 and 2008, the grocery retailing industry accounted for 45% of store-based retail values sales over the world. The figures

 Good distribution concepts with no one store more than 6 hrs. away from warehouse.

In apparel industry the level of competition is very high, as there are big players competing in industries such as Jovian and Medeena. New entry threat are higher as they require less investment to enter the industry, whereas bargaining power buyers are also higher because of the wide alternative available to them. Suppliers' power is lower due to the existence of a large number of sellers and ultimately, treats of substitution is lower, as clothing is a basic needs whereas consumers have no alternative to clothing.

The fast fashion distribution system disadvantages may be through different huge quantities required when they implement the order may find defects. Require huge number of labor to implement this huge number of models and designs. Can be out of date designs if it not delivered on the date thus no error should be made. Require contentious monitoring the designs and models. Costly if there aren't countries like Asia which low labor cost exists.

Some 400,000 specialty retail stores operate in the US with combined annual sales of $350 billion

It shows that between 2004 and 2007, total retail growth was only 4.6% while online retail was increased by 130% (The Times 100, NA) (Table 5). With no doubt, it seems more difficult for retail shops to survive, but Lindquist (2002) stated that shoppers prefer to integrate internet shopping with other forms of shopping (Lindquist et al., 2002). The supply chain of Topshop and its changes can help us to understand how retail shops nowadays adjust its position in the

Quick response of Zara leads it to be successful in the fashion clothing industry. Zara adopts international strategy for its operation. With vertical integration, it benefits Zara in cost aspect, however, it involves some risks. Due to our anaylysis on Zara’s operations, some of the recommendations are made to facilitate its further improvements.

Rivalry among existing competitors: The apparel industry is highly competitive with a great number of both local and global competitors. As the market is mature, its growth is small. Accelerated growth and expansion to new markets are not easy goals to achieve. The barrier to get out of the industry is quite low for distributors, but high for producers. Most fashion manufacturers moved their production base to low-cost countries like China as wage and raw materials in developed markets like Western Europe are high. Besides, there is no great discrepancy in terms of quality of products, so customers make their purchase choices based on price and brand recognition.

The off shoring of garment industry has steadily increased over the past 30 years as the retailers in US and Europe seek to offer a wide selection of seasonal styles and garment varieties. According to a Survey conducted by an advocacy group, today less than 5% of the apparel sold in US was made in the country in contrast to 1960 which was 95%.