How has the fashion supply chain evolved?

The traditional supply chain model, as we all know it, has been built on relay events - involving hand-offs between discrete, siloed steps taken through planning, design, manufacturing, distribution and finally into the hands of the customer.  Granted that the processes by themselves are interdependent, however, the fashion industry’s outsourcing process has led to limited real-time visibility, once the actual manufacturing starts.  The process is depicted below.

How are brands reacting to this new model?

With the new model being consumer-centric, the immediate need for brands is to enable customer feedback early in the process.  Hence the need to enable a collaborative Design process to ensure there is buy-in at the initial stages.  Keep in mind, consumers will also demand transparency into what kind of materials are being used, where the product is manufactured and distributed from as well as omni-channel options to eventually buy the item.  The focus of this article, however, is on the Design process.

How are brands collaborating to influence design?

• Luxury boutique retailers are experimenting with virtual reality headsets to simulate the brand’s stores.
• Technology has found its way into wearables - smart clothes and devices. Under Armor’s ‘Connected Fitness’, Ralph Lauren’s nylon t-shirts (tracks heart rates), and Rebecca Minkoff’s smartphone charging handbags.
• Visual and 3-D merchandising as well as space management solutions are potential enhancements in the near future.
• Fashion brands like Burberry and Ralph Lauren leverage the power of Big Data analysis from current and historic data sets to drive their next lines and assortments.
• Retailers like UCB, Puma, Prada, and Nordstrom have built in the flexibility to combine their Product Lifecycle Management, Enterprise Resource Planning and Business Intelligence data to predict shopper preferences.
• Stores like Zara, H&M, Burberry, Primark, Wal-Mart, Tommy Hilfiger, Debenhams and others are beginning to implement capabilities such as access to digital catalogs that can be displayed on in-store tablets/kiosks.

Technology landscape to digitize design

In general, the industry seems to be focusing on 4 main areas to enable Product Design adopt a more digitized approach.

• Transition to 3D and set the foundation for AI.
• Enable a true Digital Asset Management, well integrated into MDM.
• Enhance the PLM footprint by incorporating advanced capabilities.
• Leverage these advanced PLM & DAM solutions to collaborate with Production & Sales

The below model describes the flow between these phases and their driving parameters

Benefits of the new landscape

• Adoption to 3D allows optimization of processes and data that easily flows into collaborated systems.
• An integrated set of assets reduces design iterations and leverages virtual tools for faster and better samples.
• By the time the actual Product Development starts, design already knows consumer choices and variations and hence can focus on only the required design options.
• Once developed, the sales process has visibility to customer customization and personalization, and can appropriately plan for showroom displays based on consumer demographics.

Conclusion

As part of Product Development, the ideation of new product concepts is kicked off in the Design phase.  Traditionally, most of the factors driving these designs have been a combination of historic seasonal data points and new trends.  However, due to consumer demands playing a larger role growing in the overall product development process, the industry has been forced to shift to the next generation of supply chain process – a process that is built around customer interaction. Without upfront buy-in from consumers, the adoption on new and carryover products can be extremely risky.  Hence, brands need to incorporate new consumer-oriented design strategies into the supply chain to ensure consumers embrace their styles.  And the clear path forward would be to use state-of-the-art integrated technologies to provide consumers an enhanced experience.

Contact Wipro’s Global Consulting Group for a free evaluation of your brand’s Supply Chain process and potential optimization approaches.

Manoj Balakrishnan

Manoj has 25+ years of Product Strategy & Digital Innovation experience in the Retail, CPG & Fashion industry. Currently a Consulting Partner with Wipro’s I&ES division, he drives global transformation engagements in the areas of Product Planning, Development & Lifecycle Management. For more information, you can contact him at manoj.balakrishnan3@wipro.com.