Environmental Protection Is No Longer A Slogan. Finally, When The Fashion Industry Is "Sustainable Purchasing",

　　 Technology development and digital technology are having a profound impact on the public aesthetic, design trends and even the entire fashion industry. When smart devices enter fashion show, when technology brand and fashion brand are interested in cross-border marketing, when big data technology begins to help predict the trend of fashion consumption industry, when fashion practitioners begin to think about environmental sustainability, when the new economic tentacles arrive in clothing and textile industry, the integration of technology and fashion industry is already on the road.

In 2019, titanium media reached a strategic cooperation with WWD, a fashionable and authoritative media that was born in the United States and has a history of 109 years. The two sides will strive to create a content benchmark for Fashion Technology Industry and build a Chinese version of the theme of "fashion plus technology".

The content of this article is the exclusive content of the "fashion technology" channel of titanium media, which is jointly produced by WWD international fashion news and titanium media content team.

Starting in 2011, McKinsey has conducted two surveys and released analysis reports of the apparel industry's chief purchasing officer (CPO) every year, with a view to combing the development path of garment purchasing industry and putting forward future prospects. Recently, the latest 2019 clothing chief purchasing officer investigation report "fashion industry elements: Fashion's new must-have: sustainable sourcing at scale" came out. McKinsey surveyed 64 purchasing managers, who accounted for more than $100 billion in total purchases. The report points out that the vast majority of respondents believe that the realization of large-scale sustainable procurement in the next five years is the top priority of their business development.

The transformation of the fashion industry is already in the firing line. "The willingness and ability to change will be the key to distinguish winners from losers in ten years," the report quoted CEO Edwin (Edwin Keh) of Hongkong textile and clothing Research Institute as saying.

Digitalization and consumer demand are simultaneously promoting procurement process improvement. Because the price reduction culture in the market has resulted in a serious loss of gross profit margin, apparel companies are transforming the agile product development with customer centered approach in the way of low price of supply side.

The report pointed out that more than 40% of respondents said that the procurement process digitization, supplier integration, and improving the efficiency of the end-to-end process were the three most important tasks of the company.

For most executives interviewed, sustainability is very important. Over half of the respondents ranked the importance of sustainability and transparency in the top three. Meanwhile, more than half of the respondents said their company plans to produce at least half of its products by using sustainable materials by 2025.

However, in terms of sustainability, the actual progress is not as smooth as expected. In the first half of 2019, less than 1% of fashion items were real sustainable commodities. As the whole industry is in the "green" type of environmental protection action, many products' cooperation, publication and collection are propagandize in a sustainable way, which has led to further scrutiny of leaders in the field of sustainability.

David Saffman Savman, H&M's global production manager, talked about the complexity of implementing large-scale sustainable procurement plans in an exclusive interview with McKinsey, David. "This industry needs to understand all the factors and cooperate with many stakeholders in different fields," said Mr soffman.

The report also points out that the main obstacle to raising sustainable materials in fashion production is material shortage, cost growth and material quality. 95% of the companies surveyed, the purchase value of over 1 billion of the companies ranked the top three in the shortage of materials supply, and 3/4 of them ranked first. For those companies whose purchasing value was less than 1 billion, they were more concerned about the cost of materials.

Interestingly, under market culture, consumers do not have to pay for the cost of sustainable materials at the supplier side. McKinsey compared the average price of cotton t-shirts and Jeans Brands in ten British mass markets, found that organic cotton t-shirts were 10% cheaper than non organic cotton, and some brands even reduced to 50%, while for some brands, recycled materials made of jeans were 1% more expensive than ordinary jeans. This requires the company to control the cost of procurement end effectively.

In addition to sustainability, transparency and traceability of supplier relationships are also the core priorities. The clothing company is preparing to shift its dependence on China to Bangladesh (30% companies regard it as the first choice) by 2025, and Vietnam, Burma, Ethiopia and India. In view of this, nearly half of the respondents plan to increase procurement options in the procurement plan to reduce middlemen in the value chain.

On the other hand, this trend also promotes the production of fashion industry back to the mainland. For example, LV recently opened a new leather workshop in Johnson County, Texas. However, the lack of capacity in the apparel manufacturing industry in the United States will become a constraint in the process of local manufacturing development.