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The Road to Transparency: Product Compliance

Transparency is one of the top consumer demands in today’s fashion industry. Retailers and brands putting the key tenets of transparency into practice are winning the hearts, minds and even the wallets of consumers. Take H&M, for example. The fast-fashion brand announced this year that it launched an initiative to share product information across all garments on its website. It publishes key supplier factory information to prevent labor abuses or dangerous working conditions. Meanwhile, apparel companies across the board are setting goals to eliminate carbon emissions, reduce landfill waste and eradicate single-use plastics within the next decade.

Break Through the Corporate Silos with Digitization

The fun of shopping is that every store has a unique mix of styles and products to choose from. Each brand and retailer has its own preferences in terms of which items to sell and which target market to aim for. But if there’s one thing common to fashion retailers across the board, it’s the mass amount of information needed to run a fast-paced supply chain. Without an end to end platform that connects everyone in the value chain, companies are stuck relying on spreadsheets, fax and email. One leading footwear company, for example, previously sent hundreds of faxes every night to an agent in Hong Kong—from tech packs to sampling and costing information to sourcing logistics.

Just In Time: Support Postponement Techniques With a Digital Platform

“The early bird gets the worm,” or so the saying goes. However, this isn’t the case for retailers when it comes to making decisions in the supply chain. The concept of just-in-time manufacturing encourages retailers and brands to wait until the last possible moment to make key decisions about production, based on the most recent sales results. If a particular item isn’t selling, companies should cut their losses and stop producing it; if it’s selling quickly, the key is to accelerate replenishment and take advantage of the trend. As retailers focus increasingly on just-in-time, sales-driven decision making, they should be equipped with the proper tools to make the best decisions.

The New Fashion Imperative: Vendor Compliance

Improving speed to market may be a top priority for retailers today, but there are other critical concerns as well. Ensuring vendor compliance for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Good Manufacturing Practices is an imperative that’s equally important. As such, modern-day retailers should take measures to prevent unsafe working conditions, tragic factory accidents, or products that contain banned substances.

Concept to Customer: Execute Faster With a Connected Digital Supply Chain

The steps between the time a product is designed to the moment it reaches the consumer ultimately determine the return on investment. Traditional siloed processes yield longer lead times, but today’s apparel brands and retailers are all after one thing: speed. Within the supply chain, time is arguably the biggest risk factor. The pressure to react quickly to changing consumer demands adds another layer. If a retailer can’t keep up with what their customers want, they put themselves in danger of losing customers. A digital supply chain reduces these risks by enabling companies to make faster decisions and manage all the complexities of today’s retail and fashion supply chains.

On the Hunt for Quality and Sustainability? The Solution is Digital

Contrary to the assumption that low price is the prime selling point for apparel, good quality is even more of a driving factor for consumers. Almost 40% of millennial consumers say quality is the most important factor that attracts them to products, according to a Deloitte study, reported by Women’s Wear Daily.

Staying Ahead of the Trend: How a Digital Platform Can Help

Trends, especially in retail, are exactly what the name implies: ephemeral and subject to change. However, predictions concerning the next round of trends are actually often released months or even up to a year in advance of the season! Retailers that base their product development on these forecasted trends put themselves in a risky position since the far-out predictions don’t always turn out as planned. To account for this, real-time updates on fast-selling items allow retailers to not only keep up with the latest trends, but also capitalize on their findings so they can put the hottest items in the hands of shoppers faster.

Don’t Rip and Replace, Let Andromeda Close the Gaps in Your Concept to Customer Lifecycle

It’s no secret that fast and sustainable supply chains are essential today. As a result, retailers are under tremendous pressure to be more agile and responsive to their customers. They can no longer afford to take 12 or 18 months to develop new products; instead, the process must be compressed to a matter of months, or even weeks. Digital supply chains are essential to making this shift, enabling brands and retailers to shorten the timeline from concept to customer.

Digitizing PLM Alone is Not Enough: Why Connecting Every Part of Your Value Chain is Crucial

While digitization closes the product information gap and extends the PLM to the entire product development process, digitizing PLM alone is not enough to reap the full benefits of a true end-to-end digital solution. Instead, fashion retailers and brand owners should scale their business by bringing together all departments, including merchandising, product development, sourcing, compliance, purchasing, production, quality, logistics, marketing and sales. By connecting vendors, suppliers and other providers, a cloud-based solution that powers every part of the business streamlines processes, improves collaboration and reduces lead times.

Combatting the Social Compliance Problem With Digital Supply Chain Vendor Management

Whether it’s failing to provide safe working conditions, treating employees unfairly or producing products that contain banned substances, social compliance remains an issue for many fashion companies outsourcing production of apparel, footwear and textiles across the world. For the approximately 75 million people laboring in this industry, the lack of a well-regulated supply chain may make workers subject to forced labor. In return, these conditions could tarnish the reputation and degrade the brand value and revenues of any company who fails to prioritize ethical sourcing and social compliance.