With the climate crisis, fashion is stepping up to the challenge, designing and manufacturing the most ecologically savvy garments in industry history. Supply chains are being shortened, transformed, and analyzed. Products are being rethought from the ground up, literally starting from the cotton seed.
For the modern fashion brand, this is all less of a set-back and more of an opportunity to change the world for the better.
The urgency and relevancy of this issue isn’t lost on anyone in fashion, but how does a brand get started on a path to sustainability?
As with many of fashion’s innovations, it all starts with technology.
Fashion’s impact on the environment is of mythical proportion, but few can fully quantify its effects—or its recent improvements—because so little data exists. The first step your brand can take is doing a real analysis of the resources used in your production.
How much yardage is used in each style, and how much is wasted, not even making it past the factory floor? Where is everything being made, and how does it get from point A to point B? When the wrong trim is ordered by mistake, does it find its way into a future style, or is it cast aside in perpetuity? And on a more granular level, are the fabrics and trims you’re using living up to the ethical expectations of your customers and your brand values?
Software can help you track each of these elements, ensuring that you are on top of your production and all of its ecological implications. With a fuller, bird’s eye view of your manufacturing, you’ll have the potential to improve your triple bottom line.
What’s more is that this information doesn’t have to be used only internally. In today’s market, this kind of data is what we’re all beginning to search for when we make our purchases.
Customers are demanding fuller transparency on the clothes they wear, and with ApparelMagic, documentation doesn’t have to be more work on your end. Detailed product descriptions and qualities are never stuck on your system.
When you sync your products with eCommerce, they can take their information with them, giving customers a more complete picture of the impact of their purchases.
It’s a new world, and consumers are calling on you to help them make more informed decisions.
Meanwhile, the combined weight of climate change and the coronavirus pandemic has shifted even the wholesale side of the industry. For the foreseeable future, your team is going to need to be just as effective working remotely.
Flying across the country for fashion weeks and markets might soon be a thing of the past. And your carbon footprint will be all the smaller for it. Samples, sales teams, and small talk may stay in the office but you can still reach the rest of the globe.
Make sales remotely with full wholesale support from ApparelMagic’s B2B eCommerce. Customize your customers’ experience with personalized assortments, beautiful layouts, and advanced pricing tools.
There’s no crystal ball for what’s next in fashion, but what we do know is that for any brand, no matter its size, product assortment, or customer profile, the trend towards sustainable systems is more than a fad: it’s a requirement for doing business in the twenty-first century.
