\"Some 60% of the garments we supply are sold at discount, which means we are making too much of the wrong thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janice Wang, Founder & CEO, Alvanon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sales and discounts are hurting retailers. Not only does it negatively affect profits and margins, it also has created an environment where consumers are hooked on discounts<\/strong> and never want to pay full price. It\u2019s a race to the bottom for many retailers and this is putting many out of business. At the beginning of this year, H&M announced it had a $4.3 billion pile of unsold stock. What do you do with it?<\/p>\n\u201cSales are bad for brands and retailers because they reduce margin and damage a brand's credibility.<\/strong> It makes people question whether products are worth the price they have paid for them,\u201d says Petah Marian, Senior Editor, WGSN INSIGHT.<\/p>\nFashion waste is a huge problem; this year H&M revealed it had a stockpile of $4.3bn of unsold stock<\/p><\/div>\n
Fashion retailers are always pushing for efficiencies, but there\u2019s a disconnect, currently, between the speed of ordering and the making to order window<\/strong> which many consumers will not tolerate.<\/p>\n\u201cTo become competitive, fashion retailers and brands need to embrace new production strategies<\/strong> and technologies, such as data and intelligence, robotics and digitalisation, to use customer data to provide tailored, on-demand items.\u201d says Wang.<\/p>\n\u201cA responsive supply chain enables brands to react quickly<\/strong> to consumer demands and changing trends. The vision is to reduce lead times from months to weeks to days or hours.\u201d says Wang. \u201cConsumers today live in a constantly changing world. This shapes their behaviour and expectations. They demand newness and immediacy without compromise.\u201d she says.<\/p>\nMarian says, \u201cIt means less wastage of resources and also the possibility of personalising items for an individual consumer. Less wastage means a more sustainable supply chain, and people value things more when they have participated in their creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\"Less wastage means a more sustainable supply chain, and people value things more when they have participated in their creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petah Marian, Senior Editor, WGSN INSIGHT<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fashion is currently stuck in the past. Buyers have to guess what people will buy and in which sizes, many months in advance. It\u2019s guesswork, and, while they have got faster and more efficient, there are huge margins for error<\/strong> and then you\u2019re left dealing with your mistakes. On the other hand, you could also not make enough of something popular: missing out on full-price sales and leaving disappointed customers.<\/p>\n\u201cRegional and localised sourcing allows retailers to be more responsive to actual customer buying behaviour.\u201d says Wang. \u201cStyles can even be adapted in-season and delivered to stores<\/strong> while consumers still want to buy them. And, at the end of the day, smaller runs of garments that sell at full-price are better than cheaper cost volume runs of garments that have to be sold at discount.\u201d she says.<\/p>\nHow many retailers blame the weather for having the wrong product at the wrong time when publishing their financial results? It\u2019s also really bad for the environment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cEventually technology will allow us to go from producing things by the millions to producing them by the ones. Everyone is talking about customisation and there\u2019s no doubt that will eventually happen,\u201d says Wang. \u201cIt\u2019s the most efficient and sustainable way of manufacturing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou used to go to the tailor and they would make one item for you<\/strong>,\u201d says Wang. \u201cI can visualise that you will customise one unit to order. Bespoke, customised, perfectly fitting items made just for you and only when you order them \u2013 it sounds just like a Savile Row offering, only this time it will be purchased from your smartphone.\u201d<\/p>\n\"It sounds just like a Savile Row offering, only this time it will be purchased from your smartphone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Janice Wang, Founder & CEO, Alvanon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fashion businesses are looking at making items \u2018on-demand\u2019, but to make these cost effective and fast we\u2019re going to need automation. Amazon has just patented an \u2018on demand\u2019 system: <\/strong>making the clothes once an order has been placed, not before.<\/p>\nSoftware Automation's Sewbot<\/p><\/div>\n
It will be robots or \u2018Sewbots\u2019, situated closer to home<\/strong>, which will, eventually, be making our clothes. SoftWear Automation, based in Atlanta, introduced \u2018Lowry\u2019 in 2015, a sewing robot that uses machine vision to spot and adjust to distortions in the fabric. Though initially only able to make simple products, such as bath mats, the technology is now advanced enough to make whole T-shirts and much of a pair of jeans. According to the company, it also does it far faster than a human sewing line.<\/p>\nSoftWear Automation\u2019s big selling point is that one of its robotic sewing lines can replace a conventional line of 10 workers<\/strong> and produce about 1,142 T-shirts in an eight-hour period, compared to just 669 for the human sewing line.\u00a0The robot, working under the guidance of a single human handler, can\u00a0make as many shirts per hour as about 17 humans.<\/p>\n\u201cRetailers will push for this when it becomes cheaper to manufacture products using robots than using offshore labour<\/strong>,\u201d says Marian.<\/p>\nRetailers, factory owners and brands will make huge savings. It will also mean things can be made closer to home so left time and expense in travel.<\/strong> They\u2019ll be no more sweatshops and the robots can run 24\/7.<\/p>\nThe Under Armour Lighthouse Manufacturing facility<\/p><\/div>\n
Currently, brands are starting to explore this new idea, but it\u2019s still quite niche and can be more expensive. Under Armour has its new Lighthouse Project<\/strong>, Nike has a new partnership with Apollo Global Management and Adidas has Speedfactory<\/a>.<\/p>\nAdidas currently has a \u2018Speedfactory\u2019 in both Germany and Atlanta. The factory is completely automated, and designed to be able to speedily produce limited runs of customisable product<\/strong> or replenish the hottest product selling quickly during the same season. Adidas said it can get shoes to market three times faster in a Speedfactory than with traditional means and hopes the two factories can produce one million pairs of shoes a year by 2020. Adidas will continue to experiment with the Speedfactories, adding new technology and more automated processes to get to a goal of 50% of shoes made by with 'speedier' methods.<\/p>\nAdidas says it can get shoes to market three times faster in a Speedfactory than with traditional means<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is the future. The future will be shops as showrooms, where you order the item in your specific size<\/strong> and then an automated robot, closer to home, will be able to manufacturer it within an acceptable window of time. Just imagine, something will never sell out. They\u2019ll always have your size. Your better size even. You\u2019ll be able to order something to fit perfectly.<\/p>\nThe brands or shops that will thrive will be those with the best ideas or styles. Consumers will be able to customise, within reason, and brands will no longer have to hold vast inventory,<\/strong> which ties up capital and kills cashflow. Sales will be a thing of the past and the waste and environmental pollution will be reduced hugely. Clothes could also become cheaper as the labour costs are reduced.<\/p>\nThis fashion automation is part of the forthcoming \u2018Fourth Industrial Revolution\u2019<\/strong>. It will revolutionise what we buy and how we look. The machines are definitely coming because the industry wants it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":149296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10585,6,12973,12969],"tags":[6158,13560,13562,13561,10451,10457,11526,9778],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Wave bye bye to discounts and waste and say hello to the robots - TheIndustry.fashion<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n