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Speed-to-market: A key component of big luxury brands

Speed is a key component of luxury fashion as big brands such as Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Coach, Helmut Lang, Burberry and Rag & Bone are picking up the pace of production cycles, adopting new strategies focused on increased flexibility and faster-paced production cycles to adapt to increasing competition and demanding customers.

Karin Tracy, Head of fashion, luxury and beauty industries at Facebook points out, “Speed is everything right now. For luxury brands, whoever is the fastest right now will have competitive advantage, full stop. They need to step out of the comfort zone of perfection, think about how to move fast and build things to let them do so.”

Experts say fast-fashion brands like Zara releases new items around five times faster than a traditional retail brand and online-only retailers like Boohoo, who can refresh their sites with hundreds of new styles daily, who are spearheading the quickened pace of trends as well as customers’ need for newness.

Having more control over the production process ensures that brands can better control the timing and frequency of new product launches. That is the reason how big brands such as Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger were able to seamlessly switch their production schedules to an in-season model within weeks.

To help speed up the production process, brands must continue to invest in technology that will use tools like 3D design, automation and robotics to eliminate inefficiencies and reduce turnaround time in the supply chain which will help keep new collections in line with customer trends. Millennials have become known for less brand loyalty and an unwillingness to pay luxury prices. Besides, millennials, as a group, don’t seem to value brands in the same way their parents might have. That’s a threat to big brands.

Across the board, luxury brands are looking to get closer to customers through their owned channels, not only to stay relevant, but to make faster decisions. Antony Karabus, CEO of HRC Retail Advisory was of the view that, “Luxury retail needs to get a much closer and tighter understanding of the customer, including the ones buying, what’s being bought and how they want to interact with you. Then they can react.”

 
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