A brand, an enterprise, the opening of the supply chain first means the full use of means of production to avoid idle and waste when inventory is over.
For the fashion industry, when the technical barriers are broken, it means that industry peers will have the opportunity to commit to more differentiated innovation and research and development, which can also be regarded as the arrival of the era of fashion industry sharing; However, it is worth noting that the fashion industry, which has always emphasized scarcity and uniqueness, is there also a certain balance between the openness and sharing of the supply chain?
In the past, from luxury brands such as Gucci and Chloé to fashion brands and retailers such as Allbirds and Gap, the opening of supply chains in different technical dimensions is becoming the main theme of the global fashion industry.
To reduce unnecessary waste and layoffs from empty production lines, Gap is working to monetize excess capacity in its distribution centers.
Last fall, Gap officially launched GPS, a third-party supply chain platform, to begin serving some of the larger brands. Recently, the Group also partnered with supply chain solution Ware2Go to accelerate its strategy to open its supply chain to other brands and retailers, while generating additional revenue. The partnership combines Ware2Go's supply chain technology and existing warehousing footprint used by different brands and retailers with Gap Inc.'s GPS platform services for outsourcing the company's distribution centers and warehouses, returns processing, customer insights, technology and digital capabilities.
This means that the partnership with Ware2Go will not only be an accelerator for Gap's GPS platform business, but will also serve small and medium-sized retailers and brands with access to Gap's network. Kevin Kuntz, Head of Supply Chain at Gap, said: "Brands of all sizes have access to Gap's fast, flexible and highly automated logistics and delivery network through the GPS platform. ”
At the same time, American fashion brand American Eagle also acquired delivery startup AirTerra and launched its own delivery network service to provide complete inventory and transportation services for other brands. VF Group also revealed its new plans for the future supply chain in its latest earnings report, saying that it "lives up to its reputation as a smart supply chain giant".
In recent years, it is not uncommon for the fashion and beauty industry to share technology and supply chains with sustainable fashion as the core. On February 21, Gucci announced the launch of its first circular luxury center, Circular Hub, in Italy, with the support of parent company Kering.
The Circular Hub aims to redefine the entire value chain and accelerate the circular transformation of the Italian fashion industry's production model by optimizing raw material procurement, design, manufacturing, logistics and more. The platform's mission includes the creation of research centers to explore and promote circular solutions from low-impact raw material sourcing to improving durability and optimizing manufacturing processes; Enhance traceability throughout the supply chain to more effectively promote pre-consumer material recycling; Find the right partners to design and implement high-tech solutions and workflows that embed recycling and reuse processes throughout the manufacturing cycle and make them available to all suppliers and partners.
The center will be located at Kering's plant in Tuscany, Italy, and will radiate to Gucci's two production sites in Novara and Scandicci's ArtLab, as well as branded Italian material suppliers and manufacturers, including more than 700 direct suppliers and 3,500 sub-suppliers. Next, the center will serve all of Kering's brands and will eventually be open to the entire industry.
As a sustainable fashion brand that has built "sustainability" into its DNA from the very beginning, Allbirds has always been willing to share the brand's technical achievements with people. In 2018, Allbirds announced the successful development of a new technology for extracting carbon-reducing EVA materials from sugar cane. The material, named SweetFoam™, was developed by Allbirds and Brazilian company Brasken over a two-year basis. The sugar cane used as a raw material comes from southern Brazil and uses very little fertilizer during its growth. After harvesting, the sugarcane is processed in a plant that uses entirely renewable energy, minimizing environmental pollution throughout the production process.
Shoes made with SweetFoam™ are the world's first product with a negative carbon footprint. This also means that not only can carbon be removed from the atmosphere during the cultivation of raw materials, but the carbon footprint of processing raw materials will not be greater than that absorbed during cultivation. Tim Brown Joey Zwillinger, the founder of Allbirds, said they hope to use more environmentally friendly raw materials and processes to create alternative products that often use non-environmentally friendly materials, and Allbirds will share the technology with other companies to promote the development of the industry.
Last February, Chloé announced that the brand was working with the French College of Fashion and the Ecole Nationale des Sciences et d'École d'A. Nationale des Sciences and Managers to develop the industry's first social impact measurement tool. Developed based on the sustainability reports published by the World Economic Forum and the Council for International Business, the tool will help brands measure, evaluate and visualize their social impact based on six indicators: gender equality, salary, diversity and inclusion, employee training, benefits and quality of work, and guide procurement and product design decisions, filling the gap in the field of social responsibility assessment. Chloé says the assessment tool, once developed, will be shared open-source with all fashion brands and businesses.
"The world's martial arts, only fast can not be broken". Once regarded as a guideline by fast fashion brands, but with the impact of the epidemic and the concept of sustainability gradually deepening, Gap, which has been mired in recession in recent years, and H&M and Zara, which have lost their scenery, have begun to shrink their businesses, and the production lines and logistics services that expanded in their heyday are also in a very awkward position.
Especially in the context of the current climate crisis, economic cycle fluctuations, and geopolitical tensions, the market performance is poor, and overcapacity has always been a survival problem in the fast fashion field. The closure of stores and the sale of multiple regional businesses have also become an important way out for Gap and American Eagle to open source and reduce costs.
Of course, the invitation to open the supply chain to small and medium-sized brands is bound to play a role in making full use of their own supply chain and reducing waste, but in the face of survival problems, the opening of the supply chain is also a comprehensive increase in income levels and the ability to face crises for the fast fashion field represented by Gap.
Then from another perspective of the fashion industry, sustainability is an important dimension that needs more companions and needs to form appeal and cohesion in the global ecology, so the opening of the supply chain with sustainable fashion as the core is bound to help drive the entire industry to accelerate sustainable reform.
Only if the fashion industry has a definite future sooner rather than later will more industry peers have the opportunity to work on more creative and differentiated creative work, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
As Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of International Institutional Affairs at Kering, says: "The fashion industry needs to accelerate and take serious action to drive deeper change and rethink the way we use resources and production. The creation of the Circular Hub is a milestone towards a sustainable future, and this is not just an ideal within the Group. We hope that this open source initiative will pave the way for more fellow travelers. ”
Antonella Centra, Gucci's Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Corporate Affairs, said: "With the official launch of Circular Hub, we will take on more responsibility to create a more sustainable future for the luxury industry of the future. With the same goal, sharing, integrating resources, sharing know-how and creating synergies, the center will enable the entire luxury supply chain, especially SMEs, to play an active role throughout the process. ”
In 2021, Henkel, L'Oréal, LVMH, Natura & Co and Unilever collaborated to develop the EcoBeautyScore Consortium, an "industry-wide cosmetic environmental impact assessment and scoring system". It is hoped that the environmental impact information of cosmetics in the formulation, packaging and use of cosmetics will be provided to consumers in a clear, transparent and comparable way, responding to consumers' growing demand for transparency in the environmental aspects of products. At the same time, the alliance also hopes to set a common standard for the entire industry, including a common method for measuring the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of products, a common database of environmental impact information on standard ingredients and raw materials, a common tool for calculating the environmental impact of products for non-professionals, and a unified environmental impact scoring system.
In order to better support the industry's sustainability transformation, the EcoBeautyScore Consortium is open to all beauty companies, and the experience and knowledge invested by the five founding groups will be shared with the new companies, and all participants can work together to improve the system.
At a time of global economic instability and geopolitical tensions, business practices alone are far from being able to address the impact of the current economic environment. When the importance and advantages become more prominent, the cooperation between fashion brands and enterprises may be deeper, and through resource sharing, the win-win cooperation will be achieved more firmly and efficiently.
But at the same time, it is also worth noting that the other side of the open supply chain means that the technical barriers to product-based core competitiveness are being "broken" to varying degrees, so is the opening of the supply chain only applicable to retailers and fast fashion based on basic patterns and production processes? In the face of this open door, luxury brands that have always emphasized scarcity, in addition to sustainable model innovation, are they destined to be limited in the degree of sharing with the industry?
Although the next step is not yet certain, it will be a series of surprises or bumps. But in any case, today's fashion industry has ushered in more problem-solving ideas. WWD
Written by USASA
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