Courtesy : DIPLOMA IN FASHION DESIGNING (DFD)
Origins
Before the 1800s, fashion was a laborious, time-consuming process that required sourcing materials like wool, cotton, or leather, treating and preparing the materials by hand, then weaving or fashioning them into functional garments, also by hand. However, the Industrial Revolution forever changed the world of fashion by introducing new technology like the sewing machine and textile machines, which led to ready-made clothes and mass production factories. # ISO certification in India
As a result, clothes became cheaper, easier, and quicker to make. Meanwhile, localized dressmaking businesses emerged, catering to the middle classes, and employing workroom employees along with garment workers, who worked from home for meager wages. These dress shops were early prototypes of the so-called ‘sweatshops’ that would become the foundation for 21st century clothing production. During World War II, the trend of more functional styles and fabric restrictions led to the standardized production of clothes. Once the middle-class consumers grew accustomed to it, they became increasingly receptive to the idea of mass-produced clothing.# ISO certification in India
The fashion industry produced and ran clothes for four seasons a year until the mid-twentieth century, with designers working many months in advance to predict what the customers would want. In the 1960s and 1970s, this method changed drastically as the younger generations started to create new trends. There was still a clear distinction between high-end and high street fashion. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fast fashion became a booming industry in America with people enthusiastically partaking in consumerism. Fast fashion retailers such as Zara, H&M, Topshop, and Primark took over high street fashion. Initially starting as small stores located in Europe, they were able to infiltrate and gain prominence in the American market by examining and replicating the looks and design elements from runway shows and top fashion houses and quickly reproducing them, but at a fraction of the cost.# ISO certification in India
When it comes to the question of who was the pioneer of the “fast fashion” phenomenon, it is difficult to pinpoint one particular brand or company. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that suggests the popular fashion brands that helped start the phenomenon. Amancio Ortega, founder of Zara, founded his clothing company in 1963 in Galicia and it featured products that were affordable replications of popular higher-end clothing fashions in addition to producing its own unique designs. Later on, in 1975, Ortega opened the first retail outlet in Europe in order to sell his collections in the short run and also to integrate production and distribution in the long run. He eventually was able to move to New York in the early 1990s where the New York Times first coined the term “fast fashion” to describe the mission of his store, which said that “it would only take 15 days for a garment to go from a designer’s brain to being sold on the racks”.# ISO certification in India
In the 2008 article “Fast Fashion Lessons” Donald Sull and Stefano Turconi studied how Zara pioneered an approach to navigate the volatile world of the fast fashion industry. According to Sull and Turconi one of the reasons for Zara’s success was that it built a supply chain and production network where they maintained complicated and capital-intensive operations (like computer-guided fabric cutting) in-house, while it outsourced labour-intensive operations (like garment sewing) to a network of local subcontractors and seamstress operatives based in Galicia, Spain.# ISO certification in India
Thus, with shorter lead times the company was able to respond very quickly when the sale of their products exceeded their expectations and also cut off production for items that didn’t have very high demands. They create a sense of urgency for consumers to purchase clothing because they are constantly changing their layout and stock, so it may not be in store the next time they visit. Unlike many fashion companies, Zara hardly invests in television or press promotional campaigns and instead relies on store windows to convey the brand image, the spread of word-of-mouth and locating their shops strategically in areas with high consumer traffic.# ISO certification in India
Similar to Zara, the origin story of H&M also has common traits, and technically it has also been the longest running retailer. In 1946, Erling Persson, a Swedish entrepreneur, traveled to the New York City, USA, where he was greatly intrigued and impressed by the high-volume production stores that he witnessed. The following year, Persson established a women’s wear store called Hennes & Mauritz (or H&M) in Västerås, Sweden. Between 1960 and 1979, the company rapidly expanded, with 42 stores across Europe, and began producing clothing not just for women, but for men and children as well.# ISO certification in India
The foundation for expansion into the global market was laid in the 1980s when H&M acquired Rowells, a Swedish mail order company, and used its networks to sell fast fashion by catalogue and mail order. In the 1990s, H&M invested in large city billboard advertising, featuring famous celebrities and supermodels. H&M opened its flagship USA store on Fifth Avenue in New York in 2000, marking the commencement of its expansion outside of Europe.# ISO certification in India
Zaw Thiha Tun examined the secret of H&M’s success as a company and notes that the business model of H&M is unlike other fast fashion companies such as Zara, as they don’t manufacture any products in-house. Rather, they outsource production to more than 900 independent suppliers that are mainly located in Europe and Asia, which are in turn managed by 30 strategically-located oversight offices. They also depend on state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and networks to connect the central national office and the production offices. This method has been crucial to H&M’s success: They don’t own factories or secure the fabrics in advance, and thus they have needed to reduce their lead times through continuous developments in the buying process.# ISO certification in India
