Retrospective scene! Nearly four decades ago, lifestyle fashion stores were all the rage in the 1960s, when clothing retailers like Biba and Habitat offered a huge collection for young consumers. They showcased lines of lifestyle models and got shoppers thinking “which one is better for me?” Most clothing retailers joined the league for the emerging 1970s era, with Marks & Spencer and Mothercare followed by the ‘Next’ major player in the 1980s, who were largely the favourites.
Meanwhile, the great Italian player ‘Benetton’ walked the streets offering colorful designer clothes for the whole family. His strategy proved affirmative with remarkably contemporary window displays in all the stores with stand-alone units. The company was successful in Britain, however, having a long history in the market, they failed to keep pace with the accelerating pressure of high fashion from other European competitors, now known as Mango, H&M and Zara.
The rise of these high street competitors has been successful due to increased demand for fast fashion. The styles shown in magazines and other advertorials are what people want to wear. Top designers have created collection extensions, catering to people who can spend their hard-earned money in triple figures. This resulted in the success of the affordable collection of European fashion brands.
H&M, a Swedish player, offered ready-made clothing stores stocked with a fashion collection at reasonable costs. His successful strategy was his own slogan ‘fashion and quality at the best price’, innovative design, reasonable prices and competent logistics. Based in Stockholm, a team of 100 fashion designers ensures that nothing has been imitated from the runway platforms. They are mostly inspired by street trends, movies, magazines and exhibitions. Amazingly, the designs hit store shelves in 2-3 weeks. H&M’s high-profile designer alliances with Karl Lagerfield and Stella McCartney have resulted in entire collections available to the general public at lower prices. This strategy is supported by large advertising campaigns, which easily compete with the major brands.
In a world of advertisements and promotions, there is one store that has made a strategy not to spend a penny on advertising, “Zara”, a wing of Europe’s largest, fastest growing and most successful fashion clothing retailer, Grupo Inditex . Other very popular stores in similar chains are Massimo Dutti, Bershka and Pull and Bear. Inditex operates business through more than two thousand stores in 56 countries. The first Zara store opened in 1975 in La Coruña, Galicia and currently operates more than four hundred own stores around the world. In the previous five years, they have witnessed a sales increase of 25 percent year over year.
Zara has its own design and production unit in La Coruña, Spain, which leads to the cancellation of large outsourcing operations, as H&M does in more than nine hundred firms. It is modern and offers up-to-date lifestyle but standard clothing lines for men, women and children. Zara offers radical clothes at reasonable prices, however, not of the best quality, which will last only a few seasons.
Like Zara, H&M can also put designs on store shelves in three weeks. Its assortment of products is cheap and small, but frequent, offering consumers a large selection that results in repeat visits to its stores to find “New Arrivals.” So far, Zara has launched more than ten thousand new designs and most of them will only be available in a few weeks.
Another Spanish player, Mango is a renowned multinational brand dedicated to designing, producing and selling fast fashion and accessories just for women. His clothing line includes Suit, Casual Sport and Mng Jeans. It may not be as big as H&M or the Inditex Group, but it has been an excellent performer, particularly in the UK.
There are no absolute malls that look like the exclusives of these three brands. The pace of these companies in responding to changing consumer demands is an ideal test of the retail, production and logistics skills required in the latest fashion industry. These new strategies are established to develop the ability to take advantage of the challenges of a competitive global market.
In addition to the diversification in the product range, there is something common to all these brands, which is “intelligent logistics”. Well-organized communication between sales staff directly at headquarters and growers leads them to match steps with high-speed turnover.
The fact is that shoppers are becoming preference savvy and smarter about what they buy. Although they always have their favorite designer, they also know that a throwaway piece of fast fashion from a chain retailer will round out their clothing options. At such a reasonable price, all of these retail perceptions play out on Friday nights when people feel like they have nothing to wear.
Retailers are sent on a scramble to spot the top catwalk trends from drawing sheets to sales shelves as quickly as possible.