Jiayi Li

Purpose is an extremely significant concept for a company. Nowadays, as the resources in the world have been excessively used. A considerable factor for business is sustainable development: not only in the environmental aspect, but also for their innovation, idea they conveyed, the position in the whole market, etc.

The longevity of a company depends on its strategies. The company need to reflect on three factors: mission, vision, value proposition (Gee, 2022). That means it is deeply important to think where they are, why they exist, what important for operating. A living company know how to communicate to their consumers by different ways, thus the importance of brand philosophy can be easily observe.

For Gen Z, the issue of reuse and variety is still significant in their minds nowadays. Not only for they express their attitude through fashion, but the new fashion elements that are coming out are also making them concern about reducing the weight of their wardrobe.

Series of efforts have also been made to reuse. M&S has conducted a cooperation with the charity Oxfam to encourage consumers donate the clothes they no longer want so that they can recycle them to sell again (Gwilt, 2020). That is an example of sharing economy. Girl Meets Dress website is another typical example of sharing economy. They work as a shared wardrobe, providing various of two hand clothes in a cheaper price (girlmeetsdress). Thus, the people who pursuit fashion and diversity can purchase more suitable clothes. However, there still some difficulties for the reuse industry: the recycle problem, the wash problem, the safe problem which means they are hard to prove whether their products are clean.

Although there many difficulties, the development of secondhand market can not be stop. “In the US alone, the secondhand fashion market could grow 20 percent between 2020 and 2025 to reach $67 billion in size, according to estimates by BoF Insights.”(Chen, 2022, BoF).

Reference list

Chen, C. (2022, April 4). Can fashion resale ever be a profitable business? The Business of Fashion. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/retail/can-fashion-resale-ever-be-a-profitable-business/ 

Gwilt, A. (2020, July 9). ProQuest Ebook Central. ProQuest. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fjpw/home.action 

Profit is one of the four pillars that ensuring a balance between buying and selling in the fashion marketing. In other words, profit is the difference between revenue and cost which means profit is the most significant indicator for a profit oriented company. However, for a selection of companies, earning money are not the sole purpose. Some hidden factors like brand awareness, industry reputation are also worth bringing to the company’ s attention.

As the epidemic rages on, many businesses have been hit hard. In the fashion industry, brands and retailers are putting pressure on foundries, leading to an economic downturn as lower wages for workers at the bottom make it difficult to support basic living (Roberts, 2021). With the value of the fashion industry destroyed by 73% by 2020, leaders need to develop new strategies to deal with this disaster, and digital is seen as the key to recovery ( Fraser, 2020).

Social media as a tool to spread amount of time sensitive information has caught brands’ attention. In the traditional media era, people received fashion information through newspapers, TV or radio, which was very outdated. Nowadays, through various social media, people can not only learn about current fashion trends and factors from the annual fashion collections, but also break away to find different styles ( Peterson, 2015).

For another revival of the fashion market, the second-hand market is also an option. Although the logistics of recycling and cleaning are still a problem for retailers, once economies of scale are created, this could become a new profit model. In the US alone, the secondhand fashion market could grow up to 20 percent between 2020 and 2025 to reach $67 billion in size (BOF insights, 2022).

To conclude, the fashion market is still a bit blocked for various reasons, but the leaders of the fashion industry are sure to find a breakthrough and the future of the fashion industry is still bright.

Reference List

Chen, Cathaleen. “Can Fashion Resale Ever Be a Profitable Business?” The Business of Fashion, The Business of Fashion, 4 Apr. 2022, https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/retail/can-fashion-resale-ever-be-a-profitable-business/. 

Fraser, Kristopher. “McKinsey and Bof Find 90 Percent Profit Decline for the Fashion Industry.” FashionUnited, FashionUnited, 2 Dec. 2020, https://fashionunited.com/news/business/mckinsey-and-bof-find-90-percent-profit-decline-for-the-fashion-industry/2020120236835. 

Peterson, Domenica. University of the Arts London Weblogin, 2015, https://www-bloomsburyfashioncentral-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781501312250&tocid=b-9781501312250-chapter4&pdfid=9781501312250.ch-004.pdf. 

Roberts-Islam, Brooke. “The State of Fashion Report-Brands Prioritizing Profits over Ethical Supply Chains.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 22 Jan. 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookerobertsislam/2021/01/22/the-state-of-fashion-brands-prioritizing-profits-over-ethical-supply-chains/?sh=48a0cfd822c3. 

There are four pillars that caught public’ s attention in the fashion industry. “People” are one of the pillars which focuses more on the social aspects. People show their specific attitudes and characters through fashion. Therefore, the diversities manifest when different generation groups functioning in the fashion market.

Gen Z is the members who were born between 1995 to 2010. Between this period, technology and economy developed dramatically, Gen Z born to become a member of digital media world with complicated amount of information ( Francis & Hoefel, 2018). The information era administer Gen Z a special link between themselves with fashion.

As Gen Z make a significant influence on fashion market, they prefer to have a more quickly update fashion supply. Thus, the fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M accommodate a portion of requirements for the consumers who purchase fashion products to meet their social demand and daily fashion demand.

Therefore, fashion brands which have the desire to capture Gen Z to be their main consumers, they need to enhance their “ velocity ”, that means for the online delivery service, the time from consumers place a order to delivery should be decline. Thus, physical stores are loath to lag behind, the payment methods should be more simpler. For instance, Amazon has pursued a new pattern of stores which consumers can simply pick the products they want and walk out. Consumers can get the information like sizes, colours through scanning the item’ s QR code (Moran, 2022).

Digital society germinate the seed of diversity, people born with diversity. Over the past few years, diversity always been a hot topic within the fashion industry. Compare to the luxury brands, high street brands have became the bellwether of diversity. Publicity campaigns with different size and background models were launched by ASOS and Nike, but only two mainstream luxury introduced large size collection so far (Baram, 2019).

In conclude, it is challenging for fashion industry to cater to Gen Z, not only transform the existing consumption patterns, but also pursue various present mode.

Reference List

Baram, Chana. “Why More Luxury Brands Are Focusing on Diversity.” Mintel, Mintel, 14 Sept. 2019, https://www.mintel.com/blog/retail-market-news/why-more-luxury-brands-are-focusing-on-diversity. 

Moran, Graeme. “Gen Z and Millennials 2022.” Drapers, 10 May 2022, https://www.drapersonline.com/guides/gen-z-and-millennials-2022.