In the business of fashion, time has always been important. However, speed and efficiency are now both a strategic imperative and a tactical necessity. With greater unpredictability in the market, it is critical to have the correct product at the correct time in the right quantity. Fast fashion requires completely different thinking in the way product is developed, how pre-production processes are undertaken and how production is organised. The Fast Fashion Seminar will draw upon the live experiences of leading practitioners from the area of product development and supply chain. It will be structured as an interactive session. This Third Eyesight Fast Fashion Seminar will provide you with a valuable insight into how to effect rapid changes in the market to your benefit.

Among other aspects, it will:

• Describe in detail the concept of fast fashion

• Identify key strategic actions to meet fashion consumer demand

• Detail how leading brands such as Zara operationalise the concept

• Discuss how to achieve less than 1% inefficiencies in their processes from design to delivery, including inventories and markdowns substantially below the industry average.

• Understand the underlying principles of the fast fashion model and how these might be applied to retail and fashion business models in India

Attendance is strictly by pre-registration. Registration information is also available over phone (please contact on phone +91-124-4293478 or +91-124-4030162).

Prime Source Forum (Hong Kong) has become the ‘must attend’ annual event for the apparel industry, offering senior executives from all over the world the chance to meet and discuss current challenges and opportunities with their peers, providing also a meeting place where competitors speak freely to each other in the knowledge that many major issues can be resolved only through mutual understanding and common solutions. More than 50 senior executives from 14 countries will lead the discussions ranging over the challenges and opportunities confronting the industry in today’s changing economic and political environment.

The event will be prefaced on 31 March with industry workshops.

The main event will be opened by the Keynote address – “The World May Be Flat But the Terrain is Rough: Global Sourcing in The Next Three Years” – by Dr William Fung, Group Managing Director, Li & Fung Limited.

Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of Third Eyesight, will be moderating the panel on the emergence of brands as retailers in their own right, and the change this is creating in developed and developing markets. The panel will include

• Shuman Chatterjee, CEO, Levi Strauss (India) Pvt Ltd

• Edward A Gribbin, President, Alvanon Consulting Group, Alvanon, Inc

• So Hee Kim, Editor in Chief, Malcom Bridge, Korea

• Carlo Rivetti, Member of the Board of SMI-ATI, President, Sportswear Company, Italy

• Fernando Urrea, President, Leonisa S.A., Columbia

• Fritz Winans, Senior Vice President – Corporate, Global Manufacturing/ Sourcing, Liz Claiborne Inc

Devangshu Dutta will also deliver the closing summary at the event.

For more details on the event, including registration information, please visit the event website: http://www.primesourceforum.com/

Fashion merchandising textbooks state – a society that is fashion aware and fashion conscious is a society that is economically healthy. Thus Fashion is a reflection of lifestyle. In the Indian context it is a reflection of the growing ‘affluence’ of urban India – the upwardly mobile Indian middle class, more so, the upper middle class. The growth and progress of the Fashion Industry in the last ten years has even warranted the institution of the bi-annual Fashion Industry event, which is eagerly awaited both by the producers and buyers of fashion in India. Every year the fashion fraternity, glitterati and media await this event with much excitement and impatience. For weeks leading up to the event one reads of the who’s who of the International Fashion scene, the top of the line buyers expected to attend the event ……and yet, when the dust settles, Indian Fashion is yet to truly make its mark on the international scene.

Internationally the Indian apparel industry is better known as a supplier of competitively priced, mass produced, ‘fashion basic’ apparel merchandise sold by various retail chains and discount stores. In design terms however, that merchandise cannot be truly distinguished from any of the other merchandise on sale in the same outlets that have been produced in other Asian, Caribbean or east European countries. So where is the uniqueness of Indian fashion/design visible globally??? And yet when India forayed into the global clothing business in the late sixties it was its design identity of unique silhouettes, textiles and value addition techniques that gave it international acceptance and demand. What sold very happily and profitably at that juncture was ‘Brand India’ through it cotton crepe kurtis and ‘drawstring pants’, and its hand block printed wrap skirts. Indian fashion laid the foundation of an industry that today employs over 35 million people and contributes 14% to the GDP of the nation.

Indian Fashion has true potential to grow exponentially in the next decade, but before that there are many issues that the creators and producers of fashion need to address.

Most importantly what comes to mind is design discipline, understanding the commercial viability of design and realizing that the business of fashion is like any business enterprise. To grow the fashion business, fashion merchandise has to reach out to market segments beyond the fashion leaders and innovators and consumers of bespoke fashion or couture apparel. Product design through design discipline should enable a product to be scalloped and extend the product’s life span to justify the cost of design development. The product line has to evolve beyond the all encompassing design technique perspective. It has to have an individual signature that has a sense of permanence and identity of ‘unique’ design like an Hermes scarf, a Chanel jacket, a Bill Blass sheath dress or a LV handbag. The signature design element itself becomes the product’s brand identity.

The Business of Fashion requires business strategies, planning, organized marketing and selling, promotion and positioning. Design research based on market and consumer feedback, lifestyle trends, market economics, raw material resources, colour palettes, textile trends and other factors need to be done in depth and in all seriousness. Fashion merchandise is highly perishable and dynamic. Product research and development needs to become an on going and continuous process, very much like the R&D processes, which are the norm for all other lifestyle products. The business of fashion too, needs to be pre-emptive, and proactive rather than reactive.  Product design needs to be clever and production friendly to ensure timely deliveries with out taking away from the design innovation factor. Market potential needs to be studied vis-à-vis the adaptability of the design/fashion content of the product to enable growth in the market share and business by straddling consumer segments. The time has come for the talented Indian Fashion fraternity to truly shift the focus to the Business of Fashion.

“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”
– Bill Drayton, CEO, chair and founder of Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization devoted to developing the profession of social entrepreneurship

One of the exciting by-products of the increased awareness and practice of corporate social responsibility has been the emergence and growth of social entrepreneurship as a serious social and ‘business’ trend in the last two decades. The potential of successfully marrying the competencies of business generating sources and markets, with solutions to social and environment issues is the main principle that underlies the concept of successful social entrepreneurship.

Today’s social entrepreneur is a dynamic, committed and driven individual who is able to identify sustainable solutions to social problems. He uses earned income strategies to pursue a social objective, and the outcome is directly connected to his commitment to resolve the social or environmental malaise he chooses to address through this enterprise. The profitability of a social entrepreneurship is driven by both financial and social returns, with the financial returns being redeployed into the enterprise to further its growth and sustain the ‘business’.

The future of permanent and lasting social change lies in the ability of these social enterprises becoming independent and self sustaining, moving away from philanthropy and becoming financially independent.

Modern day social entrepreneurship therefore, is actually about sustaining social change and growth through self-sufficiency instead of charitable contributions and government grants and subsidies.

For those who are familiar with Kutchh, and its people, there is no doubt that it is one of the most active hotbeds of entrepreneurship. A lot of the business in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is in the hands of the ‘kutchhis’ (those from Kutchh). Many of India’s largest companies and financial heavyweights are from this region, while Surat has been a force to reckon with in the global diamond trade. Amidst all this, one of the most interesting group that I have come across are the craftspeople and artisans working with traditional methods of craft – textiles, metal, wood, leather etc.

Beyond the timeless creative wealth that traditional craft creates, a conversation with one such craftsman – a handloom weaver – highlighted to me the value of crafts as a force of entrepreneurship. While talking about the world in general, his choices in life etc., he said that the strongest reason for him to stick to his family’s handloom tradition was the fact that he was an entrepreneur. He was his own boss, not reporting to anyone else, and his fortunes not subject to the whims and fancies of some better-educated higher-up in “a company”. To him, the sense of dignity from creating his own products and running his own trade was far more important than ‘earning more in a safe job’. An important learning to keep in mind during these times of hectic corporatization of Indian business.

The other aspect that is specifically important to the fashion / lifestyle products sector is the diversity of product base and the product development edge it provides the industry. The product development, design and merchandising capability is a backbone for the lifestyle / fashion / soft goods industry in India, that keeps it in the global competitive arena despite wheezing infrastructure, rising costs and other competitive inefficiencies.