Leagile Supply Chain for Fast Fashion Industry

It is becoming apparent that the ever changing environment in the global marketplace requires a swifter response time from businesses and their supply chains. The era when production was moved overseas, so businesses can take advantage of low-cost labor is coming to an end, because businesses are not only competing on price but also on time. The owner of Zara, a Spanish clothing store knows this first hand, and has turned supply chain management on its ear, making his company the “envy of the industry” (Ferdows, Lewis, & Machuca, 2004).

A supply chain is a net work of firms. Thus, each firm in the chain should build its own supply chains to support the competitive priorities of its services or products. Two distinct designs used to competitive advantage are efficient supply chains and responsive supply chains. Efficient supply chains work best in environments where demand is highly predictable. The focus of the supply chain is on efficient flows of services and materials keeping inventories to a minimum. The firm’s competitive priorities are low-cost operations, consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Responsive supply chains designed to react quickly in order to hedge against uncertainties in demand. Work best when firms offer a great variety of services or products and demand predictability is low. Typical competitive priorities are development speed, fast delivery times, customization, variety, volume flexibility, and top quality. Tables below show the environments and design features that best suit each design.

II. Over the past few years, fast fashion has been an extremely hot segment and source to help some clothing companies increasing on their economic growth.

In a typical supply chain, raw materials are procured and items are produced at one

Quick to react to market trends due to its supply chain design, operation & delivery

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

Over the past decades the textile industry has changed immensely. Throughout the early 19th century fashion was the one thing that determined the worthiness of someone and how much money they earned. The rich wore top hats and the poor wore tatted clothing that hardly fit. Since then, the textile industry has become more knowledgeable about the environmental issues as well as more ethical and sustainable ways to produce clothing. The term ‘Fast fashion’ was developed in the U.S in the 1980’s however, it wasn’t called fast fashion it was called ‘quick response’ then the term ‘fast fashion’ came about in the late 1990s and the first part of the 21st century.

2. Richard M. Johns (2006). The Apparel Industry. 2nd ed. UK, London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.. 1-124.

‘Fashion industry is characterised by short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes and a complex supply chain.’

Social and cultural changes are major determinants of emerging fashions. However, they are themselves affected by the other drivers of change that include globalization of world markets and accessibility of more sophisticated communications technologies. The latter has provided people with faster and wider access to more ideas and influences from other cultures and societies, driving demand for wider choice in fashion products.

Turnover in the year 2000 was slightly over 435,000 million pesetas. Profits were over 43,000 million pesetas. Tables II and III show information on each of the chains. The world fashion market has changed considerably over the past few decades. Fashion products, which used to be an elite consumption product, are now a mass consumption market ± embodying what has been called ``the democratisation process of fashion ' '. Fashion products are now bought by all segments of society, helped by lower average prices, which have brought about a

Fast fashion industry is a tough market in terms of competition , this is a place where retailers are expected to take new trendy fashions from the runway to their stores in matter of week now. all of them want to make sure

The following article will mainly focus on aspects of supply chain and logistics management of fashion related Retailer Company named Zara, which is expected to boost the value of customers, and sustainability concept is considered to be added benefit to the Zara Company. The advantage is mainly because of Zara company’s designing models that are related with business and they are compared with benefits and disadvantages with other companies which have seen success and also highlight on companies that are not successful. The business related strategies and management of supply chain operations are compared between Zara Company and with other companies like Dell and Myers. The difference in strategies and success is compared between Zara and Dell and also Myers with Zara.

Abstract: The supply chain concept has been around for many years, yet most businesses have only paid little attention to what was happening within their organization. The result was a disorganized and often unsuccessful supply chain.

The fashion industry too, is influenced by external forces be they social, political, economic, technological or even competitive, which