Today, numerous fashion marketers are following one very strong trend: fast fashion getting faster. And this represents a competitive advantage.

These prior posts also look at fashion activities:

• Macy’s Social Media Superstars
• Young Adult Views Toward Brands
• Virtual Reality Live at Vera Bradley Stores
• Five Fashionistas That Are Thriving
• What Is the State of Global Fashion?

Fast Fashion Getting Faster

Recently, McKinsey & Company did an in-depth study of fast fashion. Highlights of that report follow:

“To get new styles into stores quickly, fashion firms must improve internal collaboration. Tap into consumer insights. And start to digitize the value chain.”

“Burberry and Tom Ford began experimenting with “see now, buy now” in 2016. At that time, their efforts met with a little skepticism and a lot of excitement. The thinking? Consumers, especially millennials, have become accustomed to instant gratification. And much less willing to wait months to own the latest runway styles. “Fast fashion” firms — such as Forever 21, H&M, Inditex, and Primark — already made replicas of fresh-off-the-runway items. They sold them in stores in a matter of weeks. Thus, consumers rewarded their speed to market. As a result, revenues at those companies rose 8.2 percent in 2017 overall. But overall apparel retail grew only about 3.5 percent in that same period. With a see-now-buy-now sales model, luxury fashion companies, too, could capitalize on the media coverage. Including Fashion Week events in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, and translate the buzz into full-fledged sales campaigns.”

“Broadly speaking, the fashion cycle consists of three phases: planning, design, and product development; sell-in; and production and delivery. The length of each phase varies widely by company. A phase can be as short as 12 weeks or as long as 30.”

Click here to read the full McKinsey report on speeding up the fashion cycle.