What See Now-Buy Now Means For The Production Side Of Fashion

From Burberry to Tommy Hilfiger, a growing number of designers is opting out of the traditional fashion calendar and making their hot-off-the-runway collections instantly available to consumers. Driven by customers wholly uninterested in waiting around for six months to purchase styles they’re seeing splashed across Instagram right now, shoppable runways are a natural evolution of where fashion has been heading. But how does this new see now-buy now reality affect sourcing and production? At the Apparel Sourcing trade show last month, hosted by Texworld at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, representatives from diverse corners of the industry gathered to discuss emerging options for finding mills, fabrics and factories that can meet their evolving production needs. To enable quicker speed to market, many clothing companies are going to have to re-engineer their supply chains, says David Sasso, vice president of sales for Buhler Quality Yarns of Jefferson, Ga. Spinners such as Buhler are recognizing their role as important partners in the production decision-making process and navigating thorny issues such as figuring out how much yarn and fabric to hand on hand in order to react to demand and how to delay color selection until the very last minute. “This doesn’t happen by chance,” Sasso notes. “We need a commitment by brands and retailers to say, ‘this will make my supply chain the most efficient.'” Read more at Apparel Magazine.