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A TikTok video goes viral and a fashion trend is born in an instant. There’s money to be made if you can just get your product to market fast enough. Powerful tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), data and analytics, and automation, are available to help speed things along, but technology transformations take time. What if you could take steps now to shorten your time to market by up to 50%?
It’s a tough environment for an industry as driven by the seasonal calendar as apparel is. Brands in apparel, shoes, handbags and accessories are squeezed between “fast fashion” consumer trends and disruptive technologies — many of which also seem to have sprung up overnight — and face uncertainty over tariffs, supply chain disruptions and new market entrants. To remain competitive, brands can compress their go-to-market (GTM) calendar, the schedule that governs the steps, from design to distribution, to deliver products to market.
Although companies are affected differently depending on their size, product category and business segment, recent restructurings and bankruptcies show the risks are very real, regardless of where they sit in the fashion value chain.
Most companies that hope to deliver products informed by last year’s seasonal sales numbers can accelerate their standard GTM calendars to around 40 weeks.1 For companies with longer cycles — and thus still planning based on 2-year-old information — it’s an aggressive goal.
And while the challenge of doing so may seem insurmountable, there are real opportunities that companies can take now to put themselves on the path to a faster, more resilient calendar. Benefits include reduced cycle time, improved forecasting accuracy and better in-season response and ability to chase. EY-Parthenon (EY-P) professionals have helped fashion clients identify levers in all parts of the value chain to help shorten their calendars dramatically, saving millions of dollars and opening new market opportunities.
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Read moreSigns an organization’s idea of “fast” may be outdated include missed opportunities, excess or obsolete inventory, excessive markdowns compared with peers, bloated inventory, and lost sales due to inability to chase demand spikes.
Since time to market affects all functions in the value chain — merchandising, design, product development, finance, marketing, sales, supply chain — all can collaborate to improve it. Many fashion brands carry too many outdated processes, tools and supply chains that involve multiple functions but are not agile enough to meet today’s rapidly changing consumer needs (See Figure 1). Companies can become bogged down by departments with conflicting goals. For example:
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Read moreAnd while the issue may sound familiar to many sector players, its exact proportions — and the appropriate solutions — can be difficult to discern, obscured by habitual practices and departmental silos. For example, one challenge we have seen in working with fashion clients — one that is also reflected in EY market research — is the often-debilitating gap in understanding that can occur among an organization’s functions or even between executives and function leaders. When smoother collaboration is the key to an accelerated GTM calendar, gaps in attitude and perception among functions can be seen as obstacles to eliminate.
In an example affecting a critical piece of the speed-to-market issue, a recent EY survey found that supply chain leaders and C-suite executives have divergent views on the strategic capabilities of the supply chain that are significant enough to derail performance and restrict the ability to use the supply chain to enhance revenue growth and elevate customer satisfaction.
Part of the answer is to develop a culture of cross-functional collaboration to promote efficiency, resilience and reliability, which are foundational capabilities for shortening the calendar through gains in growth, speed, agility and innovation.
An important step is to implement proper governance and controls, such as:
The biggest opportunities for improvement occur at operational intersections — between functions and between the company and external suppliers — and not merely within operational silos. Companies can improve a variety of key levers, both within and outside the organization. As a starting point to achieving an agile supply chain model that is the best fit for the brand, organizations can consider which business model — wholesale, vertical, or fast fashion — and related strategies best fit their needs in terms of channel mix, product segments and global presence. These decisions will determine the mix of acceleration levers that can be addressed. Typical goals include clearly defining product segments and aligning supply chains to them; harmonizing calendars across brands, regions and market segments; creating multiple development tracks or speed lanes to meet demand; and making better use of digital tools to improve efficiency. The process can improve connectivity and alignment among internal functions and external suppliers. (See Figure 2)
Click on a business process to learn more
The good news for fashion companies is there are levers throughout the value chain that provide realistic opportunities to accelerate time to market while improving supply chain performance and resiliency. (See Figure 3)
Steps and tactics include:
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Read moreThe journey to a streamlined GTM calendar holds many opportunities but also comes with varying degrees of complexity, costs and challenges. Acceleration levers can be coordinated and weighed against downside risks and trade-offs, such as the cost and the comparative complexity of implementing changes. Processes that have multiple stakeholders may have interdependencies that can be considered. Time-saving opportunities exist in all stages of the process: strategy and briefing, design and component review, sampling and development, line finalization and production and transit.
For example, a company could speed up the design process by designing into approved, platformed fabrics and trims and improving connectivity between design and sourcing teams, as minimal, but important, steps. A deeper level of commitment could include adopting technology such as generative AI (GenAI) or 3D design tools to help speed up design and sampling processes.
External relationships are also a critical but undervalued part of the equation. In supply chain, companies can make concerted efforts to move supplier relationships beyond the basic transactional mold to develop trusted partnerships that can be relied upon to flexibly reserve capacity and stage materials when needed.
As companies adopt recommended acceleration measures, these have the potential to achieve a multiplier effect and accrue greater time and cost savings. Companies that commit to far-reaching transformation, including both comparatively straightforward and more ambitious change tactics, may achieve a more significant shrinkage of the calendar. For others, a more limited — or a step-by-step — approach is more realistic.
A global multiple-brand apparel company needed to improve speed to market to stay competitive and prepare for its next stage of growth. The company was operating seven development calendars in parallel, each running 18 to 20 months, with overlapping seasons and embedded resource bottlenecks. The long calendar durations were limiting the usability of previous seasons’ data to inform strategy and chase trends.
An EY-Parthenon team helped the company design a shorter production calendar through a combination of measures, including reduced production lead times, redesigning the sampling model and introducing new governance and accountability measures. The steps will help shorten lead times across design, sampling and approval, and process improvements, such as staging fabrics and trims, reserving capacity, and using closely located mills and garment manufacturers.
The changes will help the company shorten time to market by upward of six months and create a more efficient sampling process playbook. They will also align stakeholders in design, product development, supply chain and merchandising through improvements to governance and KPIs to increase speed to market. Other changes include identifying overdevelopment in sample categories, which will lead to new guardrails for development and a staggered purchase order strategy to capture more accurate buy-in signals and reduce fabric liability and costs. The changes will increase organizational flexibility by freeing up significant cash to reinvest in growth.
A significant risk that we have observed among fashion company leaders is the frequent underestimation of the speed-to-market problem. A comparison of the organization’s performance with the leading practices of sector peers, using key metrics, can be especially eye-opening. A benchmarking exercise that can also be done using a hypothetical high-performing competitor model can identify levers and performance targets that improve competitiveness, while avoiding the common pitfall of using the company’s past practices as a reference. A meaningful comparison can be based on the organization’s business model (wholesale vs. direct-to-consumer, or traditional vs. fast fashion), goals, value creation strategy and competitive strengths.
We also often see a disconnect between executives’ confidence in their organization’s business model and the company’s inability to hit its goals. Companies need to take an honest look to understand: Does your model deliver what you want? And if not, could it be faster or more cost effective?
Susan L. Freeman of Ernst & Young LLP contributed to this article.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.
Apparel and fashion companies face major challenges in chasing the elusive faster GTM calendar, but technology alone is not a silver bullet. Companies can also implement acceleration levers across the product delivery value chain and take specific steps to improve collaboration, internally among functions and externally with supply chain partners. Companies can adopt a speed-oriented culture supported by effective controls to promote measurement and accountability. By carrying out achievable transformation steps, companies stand to improve efficiency while becoming more responsive to fashion trends and consumer needs.
