Addressing Fashion’s Communications Conundrum
NEW YORK, United States — In recent years, the main fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris have attracted unprecedented interest from end consumers, with brands live streaming their shows and bloggers reporting from the runway in realtime on their sites and social channels like Twitter and Instagram. But in most cases, the actual clothes showcased during fashion week aren’t available to consumers until many months after the shows have finished.
In short, fashion’s communication cycle has become wildly out of sync with its retail cycle. Would the film industry ever hold a movie premiere 6 months ahead of its release to the public? Would Apple make its buzzy product announcements a half-year before said products were available for sale?
By shortening lead times, planning production in advance, and using other lean manufacturing techniques, fashion brands may be able to get product to consumers more quickly. But these kinds of structural changes could take years to implement, especially as many fashion brands do not control the means of production.
One solution has been to let consumers order — but not receive — products immediately after the shows. Mega-brands like Burberry have offered pre-ordering for several seasons now, while a number of mid-sized and emerging brands have collaborated with ‘pre-tail’ trunk-show start-up Moda Operandi to do the same. But market reports suggest that the sales volume of pre-orders has been limited. There are only so many consumers who are willing to plonk down money in advance to guarantee they will get a specific garment in their size months later. Most consumers still seem to prefer to purchase in-season, close to the time of need.
So if enabling consumers to pre-order clothes is not the ideal solution, why not engage consumers just before the collections arrive in store? Based on the evidence of blowout events from Victoria’s Secret and H&M for Versace in New York earlier this month, consumer appetite for this kind of engagement, and the impact it has on sales, seem very promising indeed.








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