Fast Fashion Brands "Get Together", The Pace Of Environmental Development Begins To Slow Down.

Fast fashion brands once used low price and fast fashion products as the logic to "innovate" the clothing market, but any business mode has a life cycle. With the continuous upgrading of consumption structure in recent years and consumers' increasing emphasis on product quality, "fast" will sometimes become a "short board" for the development of brand.

The four giants are "weak".

Entering the 2019, continuous performance "cold wind" forced fast fashion operators to think more about their own development problems.

Inditex group's 2018 fiscal year performance data showed that net profit rose 2% to 3 billion 440 million euros over the same period, rising 12% in local currency compared to the same period last year, the worst growth rate for the group in the past 5 years.

The previous expansion of the scale is one of the reasons for the slowdown in earnings growth. Inditex group submitted to a local regulatory department a report shows that last year's operating entity rental costs increased by 1.4% to 2 billion 392 million euros, the huge scale of physical stores has become a "burden" of the group's sustainable development.

Looking at H&M's first quarter results in 2019, sales grew by 4% between the year and 51 billion kronor, up 10% at fixed exchange rates. Although it is enough "bright eye", many institutions are cautious about this growth. They point out that the current H&M recovery is mainly due to the lower base of comparison in the same period last year, and wants to confirm the "recovery trend", and more performance is needed to prove good data.

Born in Japan, UNIQLO, in fiscal year 2018, showed a new pattern of "lack of local resources and overseas gathering". The 2018 fiscal year report of the fast retailing group of UNIQLO parent company (up to August 31, 2018) shows that the overseas market (including greater China) has surpassed the Japanese market for the first time.

Gap, a fast fashion brand that once dominated the North American market, is still struggling in the "survival crisis". At the end of February this year, the Gap group announced that it will be split into two independent companies: one of them contains only Old Navy which has a good momentum of development in recent years, and one that has not yet been named, but will include existing brands such as Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta. The group's overall reform plan for Gap brand has been changed several times and has yet to create a significant new change.

In addition to facing the problem of growth in performance, consumers' tolerance for fast fashion brands of low quality and weak design has begun to decrease.

Recently, reporters at Beijing golden land center, Sanlitun Taigu, and live Vanke square randomly interviewed several consumers who were "empty handed" in Zara, H&M and Gap stores. They gave "the reasons why they didn't want to buy" mainly focused on product design and quality problems.

Miss Li, who is engaged in educational work, told reporters that she had taken a fancy to a flower print skirt of H&M. But after trying it on, she found that the fabric was "too penetrating", and the design of the chest line and armpit was somewhat not in line with the Chinese girl's figure. "Too low, it looked a bit unseemly".

Devote oneself to the spanformation of environmental protection

Nowadays, more and more fast fashion operators begin to "slow down" to win a longer term future at a steady growth rate.

Lnditex group recently disclosed the expectation for the 2019 fiscal year - the sales growth is expected to remain 4%-6%. In terms of strategic spanformation, in addition to the routine deepening of digitalization and the creation of new and slow product lines, environmental protection projects have been focused recently.

In May 8th, Inditex group CEO Pablo Isla (Pablo Isla) appeared in Beijing, announced the formal signing of the agreement with Tsinghua University, and set up a sustainable development fund. The two sides will focus on comprehensive research in the field of sustainable development and deepen the development of sustainable business models. The current cooperation between the two sides is three years.

Prior to that, the group had collaborated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology on similar global sustainable development projects. Statistics show that Inditex group owns Zara, Pull&Bear, Bershka and other brands. It is recognized as an important participant in "fast fashion" industry. Its special attention to environmental protection projects will affect the future development orientation and orientation of the industry.

Pablo and Isla said he hoped that the results from the Chinese market could be further promoted, so as to minimize waste of resources and achieve sustainable development in all aspects. According to its disclosure, at present, the group is committed to deploying Closing the Loop and Zero Waste strategy, although these measures appear to be "hard to execute and costly" at this stage, but they still have to be done.

It is worth noting that the Inditex group is not alone in this wave of environmental protection.

H&M's environmental protection projects have also been in operation for many years. Apart from many brands that are making recycled garments, H&M also specializes in the introduction of environmental protection products. The series is named "Conscious Exclusive" (environmental conscious action Limited Series), which is famous for its "whimsical" innovative materials. For example, the new materials used in 2019 spring and summer clothing include pineapple leaf fiber plant leather, BLOOM seaweed sponge foam and orange peel fiber.

Even the Gap group, which is not very ideal, has developed a new green water washing technology to reduce the environmental pollution caused by its production and wearing.

However, although the trend of fast fashion brand "getting together" to environmental protection projects is becoming more and more intense, more and more investment is needed.

Elizabeth Cline, author of "excessive clothing: the shocking price of cheap fashion", has conducted a survey of consumer culture in a place in the United States. Data show that nowadays only 20%-30% clothes in ordinary people's wardrobes are often worn. Since the fast fashion brand entered the US in the 80s of last century, the consumption of local clothing has increased 5 times, and the number of clothing donated to charities has also soared at an annual rate of 10%.

In recent years, Greenpeace has sounded the alarm more than once, pointing out that more harmful than the massive direct impact of cheap clothing on the environment is the "fast fashion" culture, which has completely changed people's consumption habits and reduced the economic cost of impulse shopping and wasteful behavior. More environmentalists believe that if we want to speed up our efforts now, the fast fashion group should fundamentally change the way of production and business, propaganda and spanformation, and become a "slow fashion" or "healthy fashion".