Fashion industry management - Essay Example

? Fashion Industry Placement Report (19.02.12) Introduction It is acknowledged that the fashion industry is fast moving and extremely trendy. Workingin a fashion company requires one to keep up with fashion trends and to be open about adapting with fashion services and products. An advantage in working with a fashion company is that there is no need to get tied up with a single product for a long time because it is possible to change offerings on a frequent basis. Such circumstances create the necessity to remain open about new fashions and trends. It is beneficial to establish link with fashion professionals such as models, socialites, trend setters, stylists and designers. This helps a great deal in establishing good relations with manufacturers and distributors of fashion products, but the specific relationship depends upon the kind of business that is being considered. It is important for fashion companies to organize fashion shows to attract attention to the business, in addition to hiring publicists and event planners to make the events successful. In view of the extensive competition in the fashion industry it is better to keep finding new ways to reduce costs. Pricing policy should be adopted whereby the consumer gets value for his money. In addition to complying with these processes, one must keep a close tab on the budget as provided for in the business plans. This paper is a report and critical analysis of my professional skills, which is presented on the basis of the regular journal entries made by me while working in a fashion company. This report demonstrates my understanding of practices in the company and the product development processes relative to the day to day functioning of the fashion company and its supply chain. Main Body Fashion is a wide term that includes products or markets characteristically encompassing elements of style that tend to be short lived. Fashion markets mostly exhibit certain characteristics such as short life cycles, high volatility, low predictability and high impulsive purchases. Fashion products are typically transient because they are designed for capturing the mood of people during any given period. Therefore, the period in which a fashion product is sold will mostly be ephemeral; a few months or weeks. The demand for fashion products are seldom stable and are prone to be impacted by the vagaries of weather or the actions of sports personalities or pop stars. It is extremely difficult to forecast the demand of fashion products because of the given unpredictability. Most purchase decisions for fashion products are made on impulse at the points of sale because consumers are motivated to buy the product only after seeing what varieties and items are available. The fashion industry is also known as the Rag Trade because the involvement of designer clothes and high fashion creates difficult and competitive market conditions. The business environment is characterized with constant change as fashions and trends keep coming and going. The working of a fashion company can be bifurcated into four distinct sections; retailing, wholesaling, manufacturing and designing. But all these functions complement each other, which clearly reveal that the industry is more about information than just clothing and design. In this industry, people are required to make a place for themselves in a social environment and to associate with specific social groups. It is recognized that fashion products are a means of communication and make statements about the individual wearing them, in identifying him or her with a specific group. Changing fashions demonstrate the working of a dynamic system and such changes are irregular and vary with circumstances. There are times when people in the industry experience a literal chaos in terms of the mixture of fashions that may exist at one time and then suddenly a new emergent style replaces them, thus making it imperative for the fashion company to change its strategies and goals. Under these circumstances, I realized that it is better to ignore the creativity of designers or the technicality involved in the manufacturing process. Instead I focused on information flows that come from trendy fashion houses from the fashion centers of the world. I understand that in the fashion industry it is very important to use effective communication strategies and unconventional business approaches in order to organize people into a communications framework. There are several people working in the industry as manufacturers, wholesalers and designers who compete with each other to get attention from the fashion media and consumers. However, only a few people are able to come in the forefront in being labeled as successful in the industry. The main issue relative to being successful in the fashion industry is being considered for questions such as who is the creator of a successful design. The success of a fashion company is not achieved only through expert skills and knowledge but through creating ingenious strategies of communication. Success in the fashion industry is not about technology but about effectively communicating with people. In spite of such success strategies, a great deal of tenacity, dedication and fortitude is needed in meeting the challenges because the industry is hyper competitive and complex. Other businesses can be established quickly and customers and suppliers come easily. In a fashion company, the day to day working is different because a lot of coordination is required to be done in limited time, by way of sending materials to the manufacturer, starting production and dispatching finished goods to retail centers in different parts of the world. Therefore, the factor for success is to have excellent entrepreneurial skills. A lot of business decisions and responsibilities are faced every day and if one is not energized, the entire experience can become a big nightmare. A major practice in a fashion company is to be constantly involved in innovating fashion designs in keeping with the sustainability and ethics that characterizes the industry. Micro and nano technologies have to be adopted in the context of fashion by using concepts of smart textiles and digital fashion by using appropriate materials, processes, ideas and designs. A fashion company has to keep track of fashion production and consumption starting from retail, e-commerce and performance fashion. However, in performing these functions it is essential to remain aware of new developments in fashion and clothing. Pattern making practices and fashion design are inter-related in many ways. Pattern making can be technical, such as realizing a sketch on a garment or it can also be an integral part of the creative aspects of fashion designing. During the manufacturing process, two dimensional fabrics are converted into three dimensional by eliminating fabric waste. Considerable inquiries have been made about design practice but a lot remains to be done in regard to how pattern makers and fashion designers coordinate their activities. I experienced that this competence is important while considering how industry decision makers work, if it is required to shift towards a fashion industry that can be ecologically sustained (Hethorn andUlasewicz. 2008). During the time I have worked in a fashion company, I understand that it is extremely important to build, implement and practice good business strategies to succeed in the industry. Good designs allow one to make an entry but success depends on the ability to have a strong business perception that ascertains the fashion company will become a strong and widely accepted brand. Amongst the effective strategies are to never lose an opportunity to take a meeting because a break can be achieved anytime and anywhere. All transactions and decisions taken during meetings must be recorded in writing because in the prevailing cut throat competition any new development can change things, making people to back track on earlier commitments. Decisions should be followed by clearly drafted agreements. Essentially, dealings should be made with knowledgeable, reliable and passionate representatives, contractors, suppliers and business partners. The fashion business is unique and requires one to abide by a specific language, time table and standard. People chosen for working in public relations, social media or graphics must be highly competitive, skilled and able to add value to the company. As per conventional wisdom, the best way to deal with uncertainty is to have the maximum possible information. This is important because in view of volatility and short span cycles in the fashion industry, most forecasts do not provide accuracy in predicting the direction of markets. Therefore, ways have to be found to make reliable forecasts so that risks are reduced. To succeed in the fashion market, three crucial strategies have to be adopted; time to market, time to serve and time to react. Time to market relates to the time taken for a business to understand market opportunities and to translate them into products and services for introduction in the market. Time to serve relates to the time taken to grab orders and to deliver the products to the complete satisfaction of the customer. Time to react refers to the time that is taken for adjusting the business outputs in responding to volatile conditions of demand and other market conditions. Remaining close to customers is amongst the most important objective of any market oriented business organization, but this concept is very vital in the fashion industry. A fashion company is successful if it can capture trends immediately after they appear, by using different strategies. It is beneficial for fashion companies to analyze point of sale data on a daily basis so that requirements are determined and replenished. This strategy is applicable when the company wishes to continue making the given product available for sale. Sometimes, the selling season may be short or the product is intended to be sold only for a given time period. In such situations the marketing team should make use of the data for analyzing trends amongst consumers. After considering the trends through the use of point of sale data, the company must consider meeting the aspirations of consumers by getting to know their inclinations and shifting needs. The ideal strategy in this regard is to have a team of fashion scouts that constantly search in the market for new trends and ideas in the different markets that the company operates in. Additionally, sales teams are used in identifying the likes and dislikes of consumers and to convey such information to the design teams so that they incorporate such aspirations in future designing. It is a good idea to use computer aided manufacturing and computer aided designing that quickly convert new ideas and concepts into actual products that can be supplied to the markets in a short time. Fashion markets are prone to quick changes and thus their commercial viability or non viability in the markets depends heavily on the company’s ability to be flexible and responsive. This responsiveness depends on the company’s ability to be characteristic of short time to market, which is the capability to move up or down rapidly by quickly adopting the given consumer preferences while designing products. The fashion industry is characteristic of circumstances whereby traditional organizational structures and supply chains driven by forecasts are not enough to succeed in the face of challenges imposed by volatility and turbulence in demand conditions that epitomize the fashion markets currently. Rather, it is required to create a swift and active organization that is strongly embedded in an agile supply chain system (White, 2000). The fashion market is extremely competitive and there is consistent need to refresh the range of products, meaning that it becomes unavoidable for fashion companies to keep extending the frequencies in which the complete range of products in fashion stores are changed. The implication of such trends for supply chains is intense because the combined impact of this pressure creates challenges for logistics management in the fashion company. Conventional methods of response to consumer demand have mostly been based on forecasts, which results in risks relative to overstocking and under-stocking of products. In recent times, another trend has emerged in adding to the complications and difficulties of managing fashion logistics. There is an increasing pattern whereby materials and products are being sourced off shore, which results in considerably longer lead times. Although sourcing in low cost regions entails cost benefits, the adverse impact on lead time turns out to be enormous. The lead time is lengthened with global sourcing and internal processes are delayed, which results in longer pipe lines with larger inventories, thus increasing risks of products becoming obsolete. There is now a growing interest in the designing and realization of agile supply chain approaches. In the context of supply chains, the concept of agility refers to responsiveness. Traditional supply chains are forecast driven and are characterized with longer lead times. Agile supply chains are short and are mostly driven by demand, in addition to being information based unlike conventional supply chains that are inventory based. Agility is imperative for a fashion company because fashion markets are characterized with volatility and difficulties of prediction. An agile supply chain has advantages such as being market sensitive, virtual, network based and process aligned. In addition, the agile supply chain is virtual in terms of being integrated with shared information whereby all participants work on the same group of numbers. Suppliers collaborate with retailers in managing product flows into the distribution systems. A unique characteristic of agile supply chains is flexibility in arrangements and a wider supply base. This strategy entails that operations that increase cost efficiency such as coloring, cutting, labeling etc. are carried out in the company while other manufacturing functions such as labor intensive work relating to the finishing stages are passed on to networks comprising of several small sub contractors. A positive feature of the system is its flexibility in being able to cope with sudden demand changes. In the fashion industry, there are several entities engaged in different processes that start with product designing and finish with physically moving the products to retail stores. Thus, it is crucial to effectively coordinate and integrate the flows of information and materials, which is vital to have quick responses towards changing fashion. In traditional supply chains, it can take almost one year from designing the product till the time it reaches the retailer. In contrast, virtual teams in networks share information over real time and achieve higher levels of synchronization. Quick response operations strategy in the fashion industry allows fashion companies to effectively deal with the complexities associated with fashion logistics. It also proves to be a viable alternative to combat the adversities associated with persistent patterns of offshore sourcing. It provides a better operational strategy for manufacturers as well as retailers that continue to be new for many companies operating with facilities created for mass production. Conclusion This report has provided a practical account of the main issues relative to the working of a fashion company. The fashion industry is unique in terms of its dynamism, involvedness and volatility. The main benefit of working with a fashion company is that there is no need to get tied up with a single product for a long time because it is possible to change offerings on a frequent basis. One only needs to remain open about new fashions and trends. In order to succeed in a highly competitive environment one should strive to have an edge over others, which is possible by establishing links with fashion professionals such as models, socialites, trend setters, stylists and designers. It is very helpful if one can establish good relations with manufacturers and distributors of fashion products, but the specific relationship depends upon the kind of business that is being considered. The typical working environment of a fashion company includes analyzing trends in shapes, colors and fabric, creating and cutting new patterns and designs, supervising production activities, overseeing the production of samples and sourcing activities. References Hethorn, Janet, and Connie Ulasewicz. 2008. Sustainable Fashion: Why Now?: A Conversation about Issues, Practices, and Possibilities. Fairchild Publications. White, Nicola. 2000. The Fashion Business: Theory, Practice, Image. Berg Publishers. Read More