Fashion Marketing: Contemporary Issues, Second edition - Pr School

40 Fashion Marketing
customer and building relationships – ‘a philosophy of doing business’. These
two approaches highlight the differences between product push and market
led strategies. Historically apparel retailing has adopted product push strategies
and some organizations still do. Large retailing giants have adopted a
monolithic planning approach to filling their stores with product volumes at
the lowest cost. They have ignored customers at their peril and many have
paid a high price in terms of lost customers and reducing profitability and in
a few cases market withdrawal. Witness recent withdrawals from UK markets
C&A, Littlewoods, and Ciro Citerio to mention a few. Contrast these
retailers with ‘the new kids on the block’ Zara, New Look, George at Asda.
These companies have been more responsive to customer needs and they have
developed sourcing and supply chain strategies focused on their customers.
These organizations claim to have products from design to in store within
3 or 4 weeks.
Recent practices observed in the USA and Western European Retailing
organizations that have been adopted from practices in the automobile supply
chains have focused on time compression and include:
Reducing the numbers of suppliers in order to increase supplier dependency
and to provide the retailer with increased dedication and flexibility.
Eliminating agents except where they are deemed to add value by bringing
in suppliers who have special capabilities. Superior technology, innovation
and design are examples.
Increasing application of Internet technologies to source or develop products
faster, to obtain better prices through bidding or to search for specialist
suppliers without the need to have agents.
Shift responsibility to the supplier through VMI systems, pre-retailing services
(ticketing, labelling, steaming, pressing, packaging for store ready
display) and devolving responsibility for quality – hence lowering costs for
stock-holding and other services.
The fast fashion phenomenon
The term ‘fast fashion’ has slipped into common usage by apparel retailers,
suppliers and commentators in the last 5 years. The concept is not new. The
roots can be traced back to the development of QR techniques in the late
1970’s and throughout the 1980’s as US textile and apparel suppliers encountered
severe competitive pressures from Far East and other lower-cost supply
countries. However, the way in which fast fashion concepts have been implemented
successfully by a very small number of retail organizations has been
perceived within the industry as giving those firms (adopting the concept and
successfully implementing it) a competitive advantage. Zara a retail brand
owned by Inditex the Spanish parent was seen by many as an innovator in
this retail genre. Zara entered the UK high street in 1997 with its first experimental
store being opened in Regent Street, London.