The road to fast fashion

Companies wishing to enhance their fast fashion offer could benefit from manufacturing in Indonesia or the Philippines, according to the Australian Centre for Retail Studies (ACRS).
ACRS executive director Amanda Young said that unlike European "fast fashion" retailers - including Spanish giant Zara - Australian retailers did not benefit from cheap labour in close proximity to its market.
"While China is a long way from Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia are that much closer, which could be of benefit to Australian companies," she said.
Zara's proximity to its manufacturing base in Europe allowed it to liaise closely with manufacturers and transport product to its retail outlets in the shortest possible time. The company had also optimised its speed to market by being fully vertically integrated, she said.
"Zara owns the fabric and the yarns for their product. They dye around half of the fabric while keeping the other half available to allow them to respond quickly to changing market trends," Young said.
"By contrast fashion buyers in Australia will first create a sample and then get their [offshore] manufacturers to source the fabric."
This resulted in longer lead times and less control on the part of Australian fashion houses, she said, and explained the lack of differentiated product offered by Australia's middle market fashion retail brands.
Australian companies also needed to make better use of technology to forecast sales in an increasingly global trading context, she said.
"Buyers used to predict what was going to happen, now with the rise of global distribution, technology will play an increasing role in modelling and predicting demand," she said.
Dr Young's comments followed an ACRS forum earlier this year titled Optimising value in a multi-channel retail world.
The forum analysed the growing importance in retail of offering products and services across multiple sales channels as well as managing the information flow between these channels.
"Technology plays an important role in supporting an increasingly complex retail environment," Young said.