New-age consumers expect more from their fashion brands than just a transactional relationship. Instead, they expect a genuine, personalized, seamless process with a shopping experience that reflects their choices, preferences, and personality.
The consumer-desired brand require control beyond physical stores, posing challenges to the entire supply chain of a fashion brand. A label alone is no longer synonymous with a sale and customers need to know more about the brands they wear. Over the past few decades, fashion companies have developed refined requirements around ecological consequences, product sustainability, and circularity, all of which are part of the new consumer-brand relationship.
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Here you will find:
- Is the fashion industry ready for a 'makeover'?
- How fashion brands implement 'circular initiatives
- How can manufacturers meet shifting consumer demands?
Is the fashion industry ready for a 'makeover'?
Fashion brands are being forced to adjust to modern conditions and demands by establishing more resilient, connected, and transparent value chains that deliver on the brand's promise irrespective of challenges.
Brands need an integrated and collective infrastructure across the supply chain to capture and act on customer demands. The supply chain needs to be developed and maintained to secure a digital ecosystem that allows partners to connect systems, processes, data, departments, employees, and other stakeholders from the outside to create a coherent, end-to-end network. These collaborative networks can assist brands in developing a more resilient and innovative operational strategy, meeting the more demanding consumer needs.
Also, the global health pandemic has changed the supply chains from origin to shop, forcing fashion brands to reinvent their business strategy. Today the fashion industry is likely to be digitized, connected, and collaborative for the companies that survive the pandemic. Even the world's most prestigious brands have implemented circular initiatives to retain a dwindling customer base.
How fashion brands implement 'circular initiatives'
In its most basic form, circular fashion refers to giving garments an after-life. Garments are designed and sourced with the goal of reusing and recycling all materials, to reduce the environmental footprint. This helps reduce waste and pollution and identify ways to regenerate the environment in a circular manner, the same principle as of the environmental lifecycle.
Let's look at some of the work that major corporations are doing to help protect the environment:
Adidas
Adidas has released a fully recyclable version of its running shoe made from a single material and does not require glue. The shoes were given away in a raffle in October 2021, but Adidas also released a follow-up in a larger quantity during spring this year. Last year, the shoemaker sold 15 million pairs of sneakers made from plastic collected from beaches and coastlines, with plans to increase that number to 17 million.
H&M
H&M wants to use only sustainable materials by 2030 and be "climate positive" by 2040. The line, which uses unusual biodegradable materials like fiber derived from wood pulp and food waste, isn't short on circularity or style. H&M aspires to be a 100 percent circular and sustainable corporation. The brand looks into ways to close the loop on textiles, where unwanted clothes can be recycled into new ones, and use a science-based approach to set sustainability targets for a circular fashion industry within planetary boundaries. It also incorporates circular economy principles into its sustainability strategy. As a result, circular fashion is being promoted, as well as sustainable packaging.
MUD Jeans
MUD Jeans is a one-stop-shop for all your denim needs. This popular denim brand from the Netherlands uses a circular business model to manufacture its products. It makes high-quality, long-lasting items out of environmentally friendly materials like organic and recycled cotton. Its philosophy encourages customers to keep their MUD jeans for as long as possible, and it even offers free repair services to customers in free shipping areas for the first year. Customers can buy or rent jeans, then return them to MUD to be recycled into new denim and get a discount on their next pair.
How can manufacturers meet shifting consumer demands?
Multiple studies show that consumers would pay more for a product from a brand that they believe is committed to sustainability
Fashion companies need a robust ERP system to support their complex supply chains to achieve the above challenging goals. An industry-specific solution like for instance Infor CloudSuite Fashion supports core business processes and provides an unmatched user experience with industry-proven fashion capabilities designed specifically for apparel, footwear, home textile, and fashion accessories industries. Whether you're a manufacturer, brand owner, or private brand retailer, your ERP solution should always provide deep, proven end-to-end capabilities for all critical business processes.
Organizations should also:
- Stay current on the latest software versions - enabling global business, networked BI, and user experience augmented by artificial intelligence.
- Allow users to access information from any device at any time.
- Scale cloud services to cope with peaks and valleys in usage.
- Lower your total cost of ownership and capital outlay.
- Use pre-built APIs by connecting cloud and on-premises applications for enterprise insights and better decision making.
Here's a closer look at what you gain when you use this cutting-edge platform to drive your business transformation:
Core CloudSuite Fashion services
CloudSuite Fashion's core enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities include product data management, such as creating SKU with suitable features and attributes, procurement, warehouse and inventory management, manufacturing, sales, and finance, among other things. Segment your data to aid in making informed business decisions.
Analytics and Business Intelligence
Use fashion-specific business intelligence (BI) and business analytics to better understand and optimize complex processes in a few quick steps. Infor's "networked BI" service connects teams and applications across the enterprise via a trusted network of analytics and insights to inform more intelligent decisions, using patented automation and machine learning technologies. The power of business analytics allows you to provide exactly what your customers want. Meet your customers' needs at every turn to keep them coming back.
Improving the transparency of sustainability
The modern customer desires not only new products and styles but also freedom and long-term sustainability. And they want it right now. Hence, successful fashion brands must continue to focus on product innovation and planning. Also, they need to change up their production to produce on demand to bring collections to market faster. This is where CloudSuite PLM for Fashion comes in, a solution that has been designed to support fashion customers in their design, product development, sampling to bulk production and product commercialization. Sustainability is not an add on anymore, it is what we do. The application gives the opportunity to track the company’s sustainability actions to the very first start.
A central focus is on Tech Pack, tracking, sampling, compliance, and reporting, to formulate products that meet desired targets in time to the market and comply with changing requirements
Omni-channel fulfilment
The fashion industry is no stranger to omnichannel fulfilment, but as more brands venture into retail, online sales, mobile sales, social media, and other emerging channels, the shopping experience becomes increasingly complicated.
As a result, brands are increasing their focus on the direct-to-consumer channel to gain better consumer insight and enable more meaningful interaction between brand owners and customers (DTC). The DTC model gives you more control over the brand experience, leading to more online sales and order fulfilment flexibility.
Financial Control
The ability to quickly assess your company's financial health is a must for any fashion business. However, the ability to blend data from multiple sources to improve decision-making is today's core challenge. Machine learning-based solutions enable businesses to track, collect, and analyze data generated by design teams, product developers and sourcing managers, suppliers, and buyers, and improve delivery speed, demand planning, stock replenishment, and price competitiveness. In addition, users get personalized reports and meaningful insights delivered automatically with in-context analytics embedded in the system, allowing them to make better decisions and increase productivity.
Leverage the most out of your data
To wrap it up, adapting to constant change, reducing time-to-consumer, becoming more sustainable, and improving omnichannel experiences are all challenges that require the use of modern technology. Making the most of data allows fashion companies to differentiate themselves, allowing them to rethink approaches and develop new data-driven ways to deliver and elevate products, services, and new customer experiences.
Make sure to invest in a modern ERP solution, such as Infor CloudSuite Fashion, that can assist in the creation of a digital platform that ensures you always have access to the most up-to-date industry features, regulatory updates and the highest level of security protocols.
Moreover, you don't have to do it on your own. A seasoned service provider like Columbus can help you ease the implementation of Infor CloudSuite Fashion so that you keep up with the latest functional and technological advancements and innovate at your own pace. Contact our experts to get started with your digital transformation journey.
