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).

Fashion is, by definition, perishable. Like, bread, eggs and milk. Or is it?

When bread turns stale, eggs turn rotten or milk turns rancid, you do have to throw it away. Fashion is different, because its perishability is artificial, driven by popular perception that something is “out-of-date” or that something else is “the look of the day”. You don’t really have to throw that blue peasant skirt out in the garbage or in the Salvation Army bin…but you do anyway, because it is so yesterday…or that’s what everyone else is saying.

Earlier, perceptions took time to spread, today they can be spread instantaneously through the web, TV and cell phones, and pretty quickly, even through slow media like print magazines.

So ‘Fast Fashion’ is really a product of fast media and communications technologies.

Having said that, it is here to stay, and regular (mainstream) slow-coaches do need to be worried about customers being seduced away by the ever-fresh look of a Chico’s or a Zara.

I can’t even begin to estimate the millions of dollars that must have been spent on “studying the Zara model”. However, while Zara’s model seems to scream “best practice” and everyone wants to emulate it – is it really for everyone?

Inditex (Zara’s parent company) has grown over 40+ years of evolution, in a specific market and business context. It may have “exploded” on the global scene when it floated its IPO in 2001, but the business model has been brewing a long time.

It has such significant investments in production that Inditex is as much a manufacturer as a retailer. Its people and process model almost diametrically opposite the command and control, “buying director – driven” model of other retailers. Its technology investments are focused better than most of its peers. (See case study and presentation)

Would your company’s DNA allow you to invest in and manage fabric and apparel manufacturing? Would it allow young people to be sent out to take bigger-ticket purchase decisions with fewer approvals than they do now? Would your design team really trust your frontline store staff with feeding them relevant trend information every day?

And yet, and yet…As labour costs rise in Europe, Zara is also being forced to rethink its model of local or regional production. As it does move more production to places like India and China, the big question is whether it can maintain the sanctity of its business model.

I won’t advise other retailers to breathe easy, but they don’t need to roll over and die just yet.