Fast Fashion

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the success factor in fast fashion business. It looks at the process from raw materials origin to customer consumption. The output of supply chain is not just a physical product, but a combination of time, place, form and function of a product/service proposition. In the fashion world, where companies are competing on time (time-to-market) the need of new abilities are raising. Agility is such an ability that responds rapidly to unpredictable changes in demand . Cai-feng (2009) define Agile Supply Chain (ASC) as a network‘s ability to consistently identify and capture business opportunities more quickly than its rivals do. Barnes and Greenwood (2006) definition can enrich it by adding: ASC is a “quick response, describe shorter, more flexible, demand driven supply chains. ASC is driven by information such as market data and information-sharing between businesses in the supply chain. In agile supply chains, the visibility of information allows the supply chain to become more responsive to changes in demand in the market place”.

Part of the ASC process is agile manufacturing. Cai-feng (2009) points at four pivotal objectives of agile manufacturing: customer enrichment ahead of competitors, achieving mass customization at the cost of mass production, mastering change and uncertainty through routinely adaptable structures, and leveraging the impact of people across enterprises through information technology.

This paper will try to reveal the key aspects of ASC in fast fashion. Zara's case study will be used, as an example, considered to be the pioneer in fast fashion industry nowadays.

Zara case

1. Company profile

Zara is a fashion label and fashion chain stores established in 1975 by the Spanish group Inditex owned by Amancio Ortega. Next to Zara, the rest of the labels the group owns are Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, Zara kinds and Uterque. During the last two decades Zara tripled its...