Does Fast Fashion Rely On "Slow Down" To Regenerate?

It was not long before Forever 21 withdrew from China, and then came the news of us head office's bankruptcy protection. The fate of this fast fashion giant has made the industry difficult and confused.

It was found that not only did Forever 21 fail to work properly, but ZARA's parent company Inditex2018 achieved a five year low net profit, and H&M slowed down the shop opening rate. The Arcadia group of Topshop parent company also filed for bankruptcy and closed all American stores, while New Look lost 74 million 300 thousand pounds in 2018.

If the international brand is likely to fail due to acclimatization, then the days of fashion "Chinese disciples" are also hotter than that of the whole world. Local fast fashion brands such as Wenzhou Smith Barney, La Natsu Bell and so on are also facing difficulties in reducing the offline channel and decreasing net profit in recent years.

"Fast fashion" collective failure, the Chinese people from eating melon to acceptance, quickly staged a group version of the "heart is almost no volatility, and some want to laugh at.Jpg". The only time for them to make waves is the last "wool" at the discount shop.

Therefore, we do not say much about the tragic deeds of "fast fashion".

But after watching the whole thread, we found a very interesting phenomenon, that is, in the "self rescue" guide of all fast fashion brands, many traces of "slow fashion" have been branded. For example, the use of recycled fabrics, careful consumption, encourage second-hand clothing and so on. This is obviously contrary to the idea of "Speed to Maket", which is closely related to the trend of fast fashion.

Can the fast fashion market, which is gradually weakening, really rely on "slow down" to regenerate? Or has it always advocated that "fast and fast" fashion can be slow?

"Fashion to good": the cruelty of fast fashion

The Chanel style skirt costs 30 dollars, and the new boots inspired by Givenchy are priced at 40 dollars. The design of the master MMM only takes 50 dollars. This is the meaning and value of fast fashion: fast copying the style of high fashion at a low price.

In the early days, they were considered to be the popular hands of fashion. In the past, fashions from T to show and order will go to store display. It takes several months to half a year, and the fashion industry will shorten it to two weeks or even weeks. New products will be delivered every day for H&M and Forever 21, and Topshop will launch 400 styles on its website every week.

In the words of fashion designers, people used to design garments according to the four seasons, and fast fashion creates 52 "mini seasons" each year. This means that consumers should reasonably believe that a new "Collectible" should be added to wardrobe at least once a week.

Thanks to the distribution of Forever 21 and H&M among shops in all the major business districts around the world, the masses have never been so fashionable. Now, mature markets like Europe, North America, China, Japan and other countries have begun to take a more active look at the multiple effects of over consumption on society, and the proposition of "fashion to goodness" has been pulled out and moved repeatedly.

The new consumption ethics in the fashion field is shaking up the foundation of fashion.

1, the fashion of stealing. Over the years, fast fashion plagiarism has been criticized by the industry as a whole to satisfy the new business model. Zara, Forever 21 and so on all have been dealt with trademark infringement accusations such as Puma, Gucci and Adidas after years. This kind of plagiarism is often tested because it is hard to gain recognition in court in the past. For example, Zara designers are anonymous, so long as designers change, they can avoid legal liability. Now, the European Union has adopted a new patent system to protect designer's clothing patents. Under the new intellectual property law, Zara parent company Inditex finally came to the first defeat of its plagiarism career.

2, the cost of fast response. Leading the fashion trend, delivering new products and replenishing stock every week, this rapid response method (QR) has greatly improved the manufacturing efficiency of the garment industry, enabling Zara to produce more than 30 thousand products every year in nearly 1600 stores in 58 countries. But its side effects are also obvious: for fast delivery products, short life and low quality, frequent replacement is needed, consumers buy more unconsciously, and in the end, too much inventory and clothes that are not fashionable will appear in landfills, and the disposal of them will produce a lot of harmful gases.

At present, Europe has issued a ban prohibiting the sale of clothes that can not be sold. As for second-hand and recycling? Let's lose heart. Even the African brothers and sisters who lack clothes and wear will not want to have them. South Africa has banned the sale of second-hand clothing, and the East African community EAC has put strict controls on secondhand clothing imported from the United States.

3, those who pay for the cheap. In order to pursue higher profit margins (fast fashion industry's profit margin is around 23%, while traditional fashion retail stores only have 7%), fast fashion brands often use cheap labor from developing countries to maintain low prices as far as possible, and ignore a series of rights and interests problems.

In 2013, a fast fashion garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than 1000 workers and injuring more than 2200 people. Although workers noticed the cracks on the wall in advance, they were still asked to come to work on the second day in order not to disrupt the production plan.

While a Turkey consumer was walking around the Zara, he found a small slip from his pocket. It said, "you bought this dress I made it, but I didn't get the salary."

It is obvious that the basic prerequisites for winning the fast fashion industry are trend replication, rapid production, low quality and competitive prices, which are being disintegrated by new fashion ethics.

The next stop of fashion: slow rising Slow Fashion

"Fashion" is the product of the class. In the book "philosophy of fashion", Simmel writes that fashion is the form of life that people pursue for social unification and individual differentiation. When the lower class starts to imitate the fashion of the higher class, the higher class will discard this fashion and recreate another fashion.

According to this idea, it will be easy for us to understand why fast fashion players can still lead to queues in India and other sunken markets. In the eyes of mainstream consumers in mature markets, it is already a "moral dice" of loopholes, which is very unfashionable.

Seven years after the "fast fashion worker tragedy" in Rana square in Bangladesh, more and more "slow fashion" brands have grown up. From these brands and KOL, we can see that the next station of fashion will be pinched into which form.

It took only three years for the British "slow fashion" brand Dear Frances to win followers including Bela Hadid, Kendall Jenna and Sienna Miller; the 2014 brand Eyre AYR used only one cup of water to clean the jeans made from recycled cotton; Broolyn's "slow factory" plans to charge a $250 membership fee every year, and shoppers can take away a fashion collection...

Generally speaking, "slow fashion" is a business logic different from fast fashion. It pays attention to the relationship between manufacturing industry and environment, respects labor rights and fairness, and pursues natural materials and sustainability. Of course, consumers also have to buy more carefully and pay higher prices for high-quality products. It sounds a bit like "standing in the center of the world calling for love" and spending more money just to occupy the moral highland. Such anti economic knowledge is not easy to be accepted by the public. It is definitely the "Virgin Mary" in the Chinese social network.

We do not want to carry out any value evaluation of such a trend. As mentioned before, fashion itself is a kind of cultural attribute with stratum self segmentation, so it is natural for "fast fashion" to cater for the aesthetic taste of the core consumer of mature market.

Therefore, we can see that fast fashion are also investing in sustainable areas, hoping to attract the attention of fashion makers. In 2015, H&M launched a new "consciousness" series, using new textile fibers. A series of old clothes recycling schemes have been launched. Consumers can take any brand old clothes to the trash bin in H&M store and get a voucher for H&M. "We all win", H&M said.

Subsequently, retailers including Zara, UNIQLO, Esprit, C&A and other retailers also implemented the in store recycling and recycling program.

But careful observation will show that "slow down" is not a life-saving straw in "fast fashion".

To make the fashion industry greener and more ethical, the starting point is certainly good. But the problem is that this violates the commercial foundation of fast fashion for a long time, and it does not accord with the habit of low price and fast selling that the public has been trained for.

In fact, although H&M has invested a lot in marketing costs and sponsored the World Recycle Week, it has launched a recycling plan in the world stores, but according to H&M development sustainability manager Henrik Lampam (Henrik Lampa), only 0.1% of all clothing collected by charities and recycling projects is recycled into new textile fibers, and it is even more unlikely to be resale.

Furthermore, the hidden contradictions behind the "slow fashion" seem to be unsolved at the moment.

First of all, the products of sustainable shopping are often more expensive. A more equitable and environmentally friendly clothing spanaction, whether it is marketing costs or practical human resources, will eventually be passed on to terminal consumers. Many second-hand clothing or environmental protection brand can not satisfy consumers' diverse needs for style and size tolerance. At the beginning of the whole moral fashion market, it can not be directly converted into "fast fashion" performance growth.

Secondly, the main consumer of fast fashion is still the young generation who loves beauty and pursues individuality interesting and new products. Their consumption is uncertain, brand preferences are not obsession, and continuous attention to the new, which is obviously contrary to the conscious consumption culture pursued by "slow fashion".

More importantly, even with the strong endorsement of the Internet and Instagramer, it is not easy for consumers to figure out the sustainability of each brand. When fast fashion brands try to make some useful attempts to advocate better labor and environmental standards, they may be doing useless work.

If we want to maintain high-speed operation without squeezing the supply chain, huge material research and development costs and marketing costs will add to the weak performance.

In a word, today's "fast fashion" is like Andy Lau in Infernal Affairs:

"I didn't have a choice before. Now I want to be a good person."

"Tell the buyers that they will not let you be good."

How can we save ourselves from fast fashion?

There is no doubt that the fashion industry is facing a choice of life and death along with the succession of the major factors of supply chain. When the "time difference" and "value difference" no longer work, what energy can stimulate the reconstruction of the industry besides the sale promotion and the sale of "moral person"?

Fast fashion at home and abroad is working hard to solve this problem. The more application of new technology has also become a positive exploration and slowly opens up a way out in harsh reality.

For example, in January of this year, Levi's Levis plans to track the health and welfare index of workers anonymously with Harvard University and block chain company ConsenSys at Mexico's processing plant using block chain technology. 9000 workers have participated in the survey.

At present, although the antidote of "technology" is still in its initial stage of development, it has seen the whole fast fashion industry see the dawn of recovery.

At present, the value of intelligent technology in fast fashion is mainly reflected in the following scenarios:

The first is supply chain management. In addition to the chain chaining "sweatshop" and the protection of labor interests mentioned above, the "super fast fashion" mode based on big data and automation system is developing rapidly.

In simple terms, it is to keep the supply chain fast and quickly match the inventory supply and changing demand with the help of big data system. The automation system can solve the spanition of labor intensive industries in labor management, rationally allocate the quantity and style of orders, replace most production processes, and complete with manual labor.

Data show that Boohoo, Missguided and other traditional fast fashion and faster retail brands have been able to launch 1000 new products a month and update their inventory once a day.

The advantage of this is that it can start small batch production and test consumer feedback, thereby avoiding the inherent problems of traditional fast fashion which have to limit the supply chain and excess inventory.

Another core scene that is being altered by technology is the store.

"Slow fashion" is a high quality and high quality sustainable route. It is difficult to cultivate users' habits in the short term, and naturally can not be quickly spanformed into commercial success. At present, it seems that the combination of digital technology and stores, using AR/VR and other new interactive technologies, fundamentally reinventing consumer impulse, seems to have more opportunities.

The most typical example is UNIQLO. Two years ago, we launched the "Ming plan" to spanform "information manufacturing and retail". In order to highlight the determination of technology, President Ryui Masa also officially announced "off group", and fast fashion to draw the boundaries of Chu River.

Therefore, UNIQLO did not follow the industry practice to scale down the scale to cope with the "efficient recession", but continued technological innovation to the existing stores.

For example, the UAV and the "smart buyer" digital screen are introduced to the offline, consumers can browse new products in the store, wear suggestions and preferential information, and conduct interactive games. It is said that the "intelligent buyer" has brought about 15% improvement in the conversion rate of real shopping. Coupled with Amazon and Alibaba, Tmall and other three party business platform to get through, accelerating the seamless integration of online and offline shopping experience.

For this series of operations, the performance of the fast selling group of UNIQLO parent company also explained everything: newsgroup group rose 2017 in fiscal year 148%, a record high.

In contrast, H&M plans to install RFID RFID technology in the global stores this year to achieve automatic statistics of product categories and sales volume. There is still a long way to go whether it's the use of big data or the introduction of interaction technology.

All in all, the fast fashion of self rescue, facing the bottleneck of demand and the efficiency of the industry itself, will undoubtedly be a painful and lengthy process.

But at the same time, under the fetters of new fashion ethics, everyone is opening up a new dialogue from the long "splendor and Carnival". From a historical perspective, social and cultural changes are actually caused by the middle class. This is why fast fashion has begun to appear in front of us in a more restrained and more humane way.

In some vertical scenarios, new technologies such as AI, block chaining and other new technologies are used to enhance industrial efficiency, and to find new possibilities in a more cool way of experience.

From this perspective, the rise and fall of fast fashion is never without trace.