California Apparel News

Fast-fashion retailing has become so dynamic that it’s now being taught in schools—at least to students at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Retail authority Ken Watson of London-based researcher Industry Forum Services on May 31 gave students of Cal Poly Pomona’s Apparel Merchandising and Management program a primer on how fast fashion is changing the retail world. He made the presentation at the first Cal Poly Spring Symposium. Also speaking on the subject of mass customization was Muditha Senanayake, a soon-to-be Cal Poly professor.

The symposium was organized by AMM chair Peter Kilduff and attended by AMM students who are graduating June 8, as well as by industry professionals, including Frances Harder, executive director of Fashion Business Inc.; Henry Cherner, president of AIMS software; and Kristine Gloviak, vice president of software company PAD System Technologies.

Watson’s organization is a government and private-sector partnership whose aim is to help retailers and manufacturers enhance their supply chains. Watson is one of the few analysts who have gone behind the scenes of retailers such as Zara of Spain, TopShop of the United Kingdom and others.

Fast-fashion retailers H&M, Zara and Mango have been expanding into the United States in recent years, and while these retailers’ business models don’t always translate into instant profits in the United States, they do give followers some lessons to learn.

Watson explained that the lean production cycle being realized in the apparel industry is of interest to other industries. For example, computer maker Dell can now build new stock from four to seven days and does not keep completed computers in inventory longer than 90 days. Nissan can make car seats in 20 minutes.

Supplying the demand

The impetus for fast fashion is due to consumers, said Watson.

“Why do we have fast fashion? Because the consumer demands it,” he said, explaining that the current manufacturing process is too slow to allow retailers to quickly deliver new trends.

According to Watson, the average retailer/manufacturer takes 167 days to produce a line from concept to availability. About 100 of those days are spent in product development, 34 days are spent securing fabric, and about 40 days are spent manufacturing the product, including 23 minutes on labor. After that, only about 35 percent of styles are adopted into a line, he noted.

“We throw 65 percent of samples away. It’s like a $10 billion sample sale. That’s not an efficient process,” he said.

Fast-fashion retailers on the other hand adopt a more linear model, he explained. They design within the season. In some cases they design based on fabrics secured. For example, Zara could score a load of corduroy on the cheap and base much of its collection on that fabric, Watson said.

The formula has worked, at least in Europe. Zara generates an average of two to three visits per month per customer and an average of 17 per year. The company does not do much advertising, relying on word-ofmouth.

The same goes for U.K. retailer Topshop, which recently signed model Kate Moss to a lucrative contract for a new Kate Moss collection for Topshop. The retailer does little advertising, relying on its star power to sell. The retailer has tentative plans to open three stores in New York and has already delivered the Kate Moss line to Barneys New York.

Another up-and-coming fast-fashion retailer, Primark, saves money and time by investing hardly anything into research and development, because many of its styles are copies of runway fashions.

“They go by the minimum level of approval and the lowest acceptable grade of quality,” noted Watson.

Other fast-fashion lines include George, which is distributed through Wal-Mart, and Fred & Florence, which is distributed at Tesco, a U.K.-based grocery/variety retailer that has plans to open 150 stores in California and the Southwest.

The results for these retailers show their same-store sales increases in the range of 6 percent to 12 percent, which is well above the norm.

While these retailers’ formulas don’t always translate into success in the United States, they will eventually figure it out, said Watson. One common denominator with fast-fashion retailers is that they do invest in location, sometimes waiting several years for the right spot to become available.

Customizing for the masses

Senanayake’s presentation focused on mass customization, which may be an enigma in the apparel industry now but is a growing concept. Citing various research, he said that one out of three apparel purchases is returned, due mostly to sizing issues. Citing a Cotton Inc. study, he said about 50 percent of women can’t find their sizes in styles they like.

Retailers and manufacturers, including Lands’ End, Levi Strauss, IC3D and Adidas, have adopted customization programs, which have been successful.

“The economic pros include having the money in advance to work with, and you can develop strong customer loyalty. You can provide what the customer wants and likes,” said Senanayake.

The professor, who will join Cal Poly in August, was instrumental in helping the university secure a 3-D body scanner from Cary, N.C.–based {TC}2.

Scanners are being hailed as a major tool to be used in customization and fast-fashion applications.

Cal Poly administrators are exploring opportunities to collaborate with companies to employ the scanner. Already, it plans to import body-scan data into software provided by Tukatech Inc. and PAD System Technologies, said Associate Professor Cynthia Regan. PAD supplies Cal Poly with CAD (computer-aided design) pattern-making, marker and grading software, and Tukatech supplies its e-fit Simulator 3-D application, which allows users to drape samples over virtual fit models and then animate them to see how fabrics react to movement. The idea is to reduce iterations and save time and money during the pre-production process.

“The smaller companies may not be able to invest in such technology as our NX16 scanner, but we can collaborate and help each other,” said Senanayake, who previously taught at North Carolina State and the University of Kansas.

The scanner is the size of a retail fitting room and acquires data within seconds, providing hundreds of points of data. {TC}2 scanners were used in “Size USA,” a national sizing survey taken from thousands of subjects around the country, and are being used in several programs to improve fit for manufacturers’ and retailers’ products.