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Keywords
Supply chain management, Fashion industry, Agile production
Abstract
Fashion markets are synonymous with rapid change and, as a result, commercial success or failure is largely determined by the organisation's flexibility and responsiveness. Responsiveness is characterised by short time-to-market, the ability to scale up (or down) quickly and the rapid incorporation of consumer preferences into the design process. In this paper it is argued that conventional organisational structures and forecast-driven supply chains are not adequate to meet the challenges of volatile and turbulent demand which typify fashion markets. Instead, the requirement is for the creation of an agile organisation embedded within an agile supply chain.
1. Introduction
Fashion markets have long attracted the interest of researchers. More often the focus of their work was the psychology and sociology of fashion and with the process by which fashions were adopted across populations (e.g. Wills and Midgley, 1973). In parallel with this, a body of work has developed seeking to identify cycles in fashions (e.g. Carman, 1966). Much of this earlier work was intended to create insights and even tools to help improve the demand forecasting of fashion products. However, the reality that is now gradually being accepted both by those who work in the industry and those who study it, is that the demand for fashion products cannot be forecast. Instead, we need to recognise that fashion markets are complex open systems that frequently demonstrate high levels of "chaos". In such conditions managerial effort may be better expended on devising strategies and structures that enable products to be created, manufactured and delivered on the basis of "real-time" demand. This is the context that has spawned the emerging domain of the agile supply chain (e.g. Harrison et al., 1999; Christopher and Towill, 2001) and the philosophy of quick response (Lowson et al., 1999).
2. The nature of fashion markets
Fashion is a broad term that typically encompasses any product or market where there is an element of style that is likely to be short-lived. We have denned fashion markets as typically exhibiting the following characteristics:
* Short life-cycles - the product is often ephemeral, designed to capture the mood of the moment: consequently, the period in which it will be saleable is likely to be very...