The Hidden Cost of Fast Fashion: Worker Safety. Shoppers have become accustomed to the steady stream of colorful clothing that so-called fast-fashion apparel chains churn out. Rather than launching lines only at the beginning of each season, chains such as Inditex’s (ITX:SM) Zara and Hennes & Mauritz’s (HMB:SS) H&M introduce styles as often as every two weeks. The constant replenishment keeps fashion-conscious customers coming back for the generally low-priced goods. But worker rights advocates say fast fashion has another, darker cost: Demands for constant product turns may be putting workers’ lives at risk in developing nations such as Bangladesh, which suffered two fatal garment factory fires in as many months. Apparel sold by Spain’s Inditex, the world’s largest apparel company and a pioneer of faster fashion cycles, was found at a factory that caught fire on Jan. 26, killing at least seven people.
Photograph by G.M.B. Akash/PanosA Bangladeshi factory for Western fashion lines burned down on Nov. 24. The Inditex-Zara case. In today's highly competitive and global marketplace, the pressure on organizations to find new ways to create and deliver value to the customers grows even stronger. Market development combined with new sources of global competition has led to over-capacity in many industries. Putting an incredible pressure on price, as often is the critical competitive variable.
This leads to the need of more effectiveness and efficiency inside a business. It is against these new conditions that the use of supply chain management has moved to the centre stage over the last two decades (Christopher, 2004). To manage the supply chain better, is to serve the customers more effectively and yet reduce the cost of providing that service. There has been a growing recognition that it is through this kind of management that it can be achieved a twin goal of cost reduction and service improvement.
According to Chris Zook managing the supply chain is not an easy task (Zook, 2001). Value Chain Operation Management. Zara Case Study. Inditex: Fashion forward. Zara presentation 1. Zara's Big Idea: What the World's Top Fashion Retailer Tells Us About Innovation - Derek Thompson. Zara didn't have to invent a brand new product to become the world's biggest fashion retailer. It just had to invent a new process. And process innovation is dominating the global economy. Reuters There are three steps to being a successful fashion company. Step one: Make clothes that people want to wear. Step two: Sell enough clothes for more than you made them.
Step three: Do it again, and again, and again. Easy enough to list. Zara, the world's largest fashion retailer, has an innovative solution to both the style problem and the marketing problem, as Suzy Hansen explained in the New York Times magazine this weekend. That's the design challenge. "The high street is really divided according to brand value," says [Masoud Golsorkhi, the editor of Tank, a London magazine about culture and fashion], who is also a consultant for fashion brands.
Supply chains sounds boring. The Zara Model is successful, global, and enviable. Which kind of innovator is Zara? Zara Fast Fashion (IMT Dubai)