BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management

Until the mid-1980s, success in the fashion industry was based on low cost mass production of standardized styles that did not change frequently due to the design restrictions of the factories as the demand in apparel market was more homogeneous. Outsourcing trend by the western brands enabled lowering the price of the product. When the supply chain has learned the conduct of the functionality, it was becoming agile and able to offer varieties. The supply chain agility is the key towards the shift from mass production to fast fashion. The changes in the fashion industry have been occurring rather rapidly within the trend of shift and the impact is drastic, especially on apparel supply chain operations. Cao et al. argue that the changes are attributable to the fickle consumer demands and more customized market requirements. Meanwhile, mass customization evolved as another concept to provide individual consumers with products tailored to their specific wants, and these customized products are manufactured in a mass production arena, allowing them to be sold at prices reflecting economies of scale. It indicates that market was demanding for more varieties and even personalization through customization. So the demand is seen already before real fast fashion trend started and the trend of fast fashion just not evolved suddenly. Tokatli admits that even though clothing retailers in the industrialized core have favoured a strategy of increased variety and fissionability since the 1980s, 'fast fashion' principles have recently reinforced that strategy even further.

Fast fashion is a concept whereby retailers orientate their business strategies to reduce the time taken to get fashion product into store, working on a system of in-season buying so product ranges are consistently updated throughout the season. This is actually the concept behind the trend, however it is seen that the successful brands have their own way of managing the concept. Runfola & Guercini point that although fast fashion has been considered by academics and managers as a "unique model", previous work has demonstrated the huge variety of "fast fashion" formulas adopted in the real world. By including consumer demand as a facet of fast fashion, they suggest that in-season buying and reduced lead time concept incorporate "newness" as a key feature of fast fashion, in other words, continual renewal and updating of ranges and merchandise delivered to the store. Bhardwaj and Fairhurst state that the concept emerges from the constant need to 'refresh' product ranges to extend the number of 'seasons', that is, the frequency with which the entire merchandise within a store is changed. They add that by small collections of merchandise, fashion retailers are encouraging consumers to visit their stores more frequently. Tokatli points out that fast fashion requires the retailers have rapidly increasing numbers of stores worldwide – preferably directly owned and operated outlets in secure countries and franchised outlets in risky ones – so that they can reach more and more customers around the globe.