China’s demise as clothing supplier ‘greatly exaggerated’ – WFSGI forum
11/02/2015
He was speaking at the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI)’s World Sports Forum, which welcomed a record 150 participants.
He added: “While some years ago successful sourcing for apparel and outdoor meant realising a good price-performance ratio and gross margin, today’s supply chain faces a variety of additional challenges: speed of innovation, demand volatility, growth of multichannel, increasing internationalisation, as well as increased consumer expectations regarding ecological and social standards.”
Leonie Barrie, managing editor at just-style.com, told delegates that 20 countries supply 97.5% of the world’s clothing. “Rumours of the demise of China are greatly exaggerated, given that 40%-45% of world production still comes from the country and the domestic market continues to grow.”
Dhyana van der Pols, head of textile innovation and manufacturing at WFSGI, presented two new retail models for the apparel industry. The ‘speed to market, consumer model’, where bricks-and-mortar stores will give way to pop-up stores and open studios, and the ‘slow fashion, slow buying-model’ used by Gustin jeans, which customises jeans and only launches production when a target quantity funded by customers is reached. “Of course this will end in a no waste and no inventory result, as you only manufacture what the customer wants to wear,” said Ms Van der Pols.
Image: Dhyana van der Pols, head of textile innovation and manufacturing at WFSGI.
Credit: Andreas Gebert
Share this story:
