"Quality Gate" In Fast Fashion

Recently, ZARA, G2000 and other famous foreign countries.

Lack of detail guarantees quality.

As a popular chain store, ZARA group, the most famous subsidiary of Inditex group, accounts for only 1/3 of all the branches of Inditex company, but its sales account for about 70% of the total sales of the group.

Fashion, speed and price popularity have made ZARA unique operation mode. However, the positioning of consumer demand and the unique supply chain management system have become the root of ZARA's "poor quality" in China.

Two times a week - this is the changing frequency of new windows; 7 days - this is the time for capital reflux; the 12 day is the time to collect fashion information, integrate design to production and sales; 15 days - the longest product storage time; 80 thousand hours of distribution power.

ZARA's famous "15 day myth" did bring a disruptive impact to the fashion industry. It reduced the supply chain to only two weeks, and the design, production and delivery were completed within 15 days.

However, such a global business model has quickly become an example of many fast fashion or sports brands competing to imitate.

According to the insiders, a factory completed a 4 order pattern of ZARA and 40 thousand garments for 20 weeks. The factory will complete 20 thousand items in 5 weeks with the efficiency of 500 garments per day. After the launch of clothing, if the response is strong, the remaining 20 thousand will be immediately added.

Topshop, which competes with ZARA, squeezed the production cycle to 6 weeks. At the same time, H&M was also reluctant to disclose that their products would only take 3 weeks from design to listing.

However, the shortening of the production cycle challenges product quality, and rapid expansion leads to quality problems of fast fashion brands.

"One of the characteristics of private retail brands is low cost, because it reduces the intermediate links from production to sales.

The supply chain of the general retail industry is "raw material production processing - dealer retailer customer", and its own retail brand has no distributor, which obviously saves channel costs.

Hou Weimin, an Associate Research Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "on the one hand, the fast-food chain will greatly reduce the cost of manufacturing links. On the other hand, the gradual improvement of the international testing standards is very difficult for all OEM factories to cause actual deterrence and influence.

Fast fashion brands such as ZARA and H&M have not yet matched themselves in the domestic fashion industry, and Chinese consumers continue to welcome them.

"ZARA promotes the concept of fast fashion. Its design and shopping environment, cost can be compared with big brands, but it has to sell the price of civilians. Therefore, because of cost control, there are bound to be some problems."

ZARA media director Shao Jinmin said.

Fabric and machining problems

It is understood that the quality problem of ZARA is reflected in the fabric quality failure.

Generally speaking, fabrics are supplied by ZARA, and factories are custom-made.

"Because of the continuous introduction of new models, resulting in a large number of suppliers and frequent replacement, it is difficult to ensure that all the fabric of the supply chain pass through, but each fabric is not realistic to detect, the cost is too high."

Shao Jinmin told reporters.

Fabric is a key link in the competition of garment industry. For garment enterprises, too often changing fabric is a taboo of suppliers. However, ZARA needs to constantly introduce new designs, win the love of young people, and create a fast fashion characterized by "fast, ruthless and accurate", so that people who pursue fashions are scramble for it and get together to buy.

A wide variety of materials and styles are inevitable, and the same fabric should also lower the cost and make it as cheap as possible. The quality is difficult to guarantee.

In order to respond quickly, ZARA's procurement and production are in Europe. Only 20% of the basic products are produced in low cost areas such as Asia. Besides, the fabrics purchased by ZARA are usually undyed and are dyed in real time according to demand.

ZARA allows its factories in Europe to do highly automated work, using high-tech production equipment to do dyeing, tailoring and other tasks, and printing, hot drilling, flocking, embroidery, washing water and other human intensive work outsourcing.

ZARA has been repeatedly charged with "outsourcing factory sweats". Media reports said that its working conditions in more than 30 outsourced factories in Brazil were particularly poor.

The workshop in Bolivia is a microcosm.

According to local media reports, a pair of jeans from ZARA here in Brazil costs about 200 re al (126 US dollars), and its production cost is only 1.8 (1.14 dollars).

In the global third generation factory for ZARA, sometimes the order is subcontracted to the small workshop. In Brazil, one of the ZARA garment outsourcing factories has 33 secret workshops.

Of the 400 factories in Spain, only 20 are modern production organizations, others are handicraft shops which are very backward in production.

"Such a wide variety of technical conditions and working environment, on the one hand, save many costs for ZARA, but also sacrifice the quality of products."

ZARA, a marketing manager in China, said.

The standard is confused and the execution is not strict

ZARA quality problems can not escape the word "formaldehyde content", "pH value", "color fastness", "fiber content", "identification mark" and so on.

Beijing inspection department staff told reporters, which also marked with the content of the logo is inconsistent with the physical content, repeatedly complained by consumers.

For example: ZARA a casual pants fabric nominal cotton content is 75%, wool 20%, polyester 5%, and the measured cotton content is 68.2%, wool content 10.6%, polyester fiber is also polyester content 15.7%.

In the past two years, Shanghai and Beijing repeatedly answered the question of "black list" because of the unqualified pH value of trousers or the inconsistent results of the test results of the fiber content of cardigan and product labels.

In comparison tests, safety problems such as color fastness and formaldehyde content are common in these famous brand casual wear.

"Mandatory standards such as color fastness and other items are strong inspection items, which are the minimum items that must be followed by clothing importing or domestic production. These items are not allowed to be produced and sold if they fail to meet the standards."

Zhang Cuizhu, deputy director of Quality Certification Department of the national textile product development center, told reporters.

"The technical requirements specified in China's" eco textile technical requirements "and" national basic safety technical specifications for textile products "are not issued in the form of instructions or decrees. The domestic standards are relatively loose, and the actual formulation time is relatively late, which may lead to the reduction of the quality of finished products made in some international brand garments in China.

Feng Zhaoyan, manager of TESTEX Swiss textile Certification Co., Ltd.

However, Shao Jinmin, director of ZARA media, said in an interview with reporters that the production of ZARA products belongs to the global layout. About 50% of them are produced in Spain, 26% in other European countries, 24% in Asian and African countries and in other regions with relatively low labor force in the world.

This time, a batch of goods with quality problems found in Shanghai has been produced in Brazil.

Over the past few years, goods in Spain and Brazil are prone to problems. These problems are relatively rare in Chinese factories. Chinese factories are basically the same as international standards, but the goods in other countries are difficult to guarantee. The main reason is that raw materials procurement and post processing are not strictly controlled.