Fashion After the Pandemic

If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it’s that unexpected events can turn “business as usual” upside down – and oftentimes quickly. That’s certainly true of the experience of the fashion industry as the pandemic unfolded. And the ramifications continue to be felt as the uncertainty about when we will see the backside the pandemic remains, as well as what life will look like afterward.

In a report published earlier this year, "Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company, The State of Fashion 2021," put forward two potential recovery scenarios. These included an “Earlier Recovery” scenario where the industry would experience a sales decline of up to 5% in 2021 compared to 2019. The other is a “Later Recovery” scenario, which seems more likely at this point with the resurgence of the virus around the globe due to a combination of lack of vaccinations and the increased transmissibility of the Delta variant. In this scenario, a decline of up to 15% compared with 2019. In this latter case, full recovery to 2019 levels could not be expected until the fourth quarter of 2023.

This industry trauma is due to economic conditions during shutdowns that caused closures and bankruptcies. But it is also due to an acceleration of the move to e-commerce by consumers, as well as greater concerns about the environment and social justice – most particularly the conditions of workers, especially in some Asian countries. And that is driving change in the industry faster than could have been anticipated prior to the pandemic.

“The key principles for managing change will be flexibility and agility, alongside operational resilience — a critical capability in an uncertain environment," according to the BoF and McKinsey report. "To inform decision-making, we expect data and analytics to play an increasingly important role, helping companies to track shifts in demand across geographies, categories, channels and value segments.

“In a disrupted environment, decision-makers must be bold. They must develop novel strategies for their assortments or product offering, focused on profitability, value, simplicity and downsized collections, rather than discounting and volumes. They also should create a more nuanced assessment of store ROI to manage the crisis in physical retail while implementing a truly omnichannel perspective on store operations.”

Brands and retailers will respond to this advice in different ways. Some will try to continue with business as usual, and that is likely not a good strategy for future survival. Others will make incremental changes in their manufacturing and supply chain. But the ones that will really break through are those that adopt bold strategies, as the report suggests. And if they don’t, there will likely be a plethora of non-traditional competitors that will step in and do so, especially as younger generations begin to establish businesses that are not hamstrung by tradition.

What might those bold moves be? It will vary from company to company, but I believe one result we will see is growth in on-demand manufacturing of apparel and other textile-based products to not only make downsized collections more cost effective, but to also improve time-to-market in an effort to address rapidly changing market trends. And doing so requires harnessing a variety of technological developments, from fiber creation through knitting or weaving, dyeing or printing and cut-and-sew.

Whatever they do, we hope they will keep sustainability top of mind. In the end, not only is that good for the planet, but it will be good for business as well. There are examples already of innovative initiatives in place or underway that do just that, and the hope is these initiatives will be successful, will be touted in the marketplace and will encourage others to follow suit.

One example is SAI-TEX USA, a subsidiary of SAI-TEX in Vietnam. Its Los Angeles plant is dedicated to on-demand production of denim products in a highly automated environment. While denim is notorious for its lack of sustainability, SAI-TEX has ameliorated that somewhat by launching a denim dyeing factory in Viet Nam that recycles 100% of its wastewater, significantly reducing the environmental footprint of the denim fabrics it dyes – and then supplies to LA, among others.

Another example is Ralph Lauren’s Color on Demand, a revolutionary dyeing platform that is poised to transform how the fashion industry colors cotton – more sustainably, more effectively and faster than ever before. Leveraging ECOFAST Pure Sustainable Textile Treatment, a pretreatment solution developed by Dow for cotton textiles, Color on Demand expects to result in the use of up to 40% less water, 85% fewer chemicals, 90% less energy and a 60% reduction in carbon footprint compared to traditional cotton dyeing processes. The company plans to integrate this process into its supply chain during 2021 with a goal of using the Color on Demand platform in more than 80% of its solid cotton products.

There are also a number of projects in action or underway to reshore textile and apparel manufacturing to North America and Europe. Some of these are designed to create a vertically integrated on-demand manufacturing environment, often reliant on e-commerce and using a variety of digital technologies, including digital print. Of course, the bottleneck in full automation is still in the sewing operation; and though progress is being made in that area, it will be some time before it reaches a point where there is a significant reduction in manual labor.

And that is perhaps the biggest obstacle to reshoring garment manufacturing at scale – the lack of talent in sewing. Here again, there are programs in place that are working to train people in industrial sewing, and those programs are important. For example, ISAIC in the Detroit area, has an aggressive training program in place and runs a factory where the skills can be put to use. They also offer a career path for those who want to take their career to a new level, even dedicating one day per week to training. They have also established partnerships with design schools to offer that avenue to their students as well. According to Jennifer Guarino, who runs ISAIC, historically if someone becomes an industrial sewist, they are pigeonholed as such and have limited career change opportunities; she aims to change that for folks that want to enter the field as sewists and move to other disciplines over time.

At SAI-TEX USA, Los Angeles was chosen as a location, according to its President, Kathy Kweon, because there is a substantial pool of sewing labor in the area. One approach they should be commended on is a policy of hiring those who are unemployed rather than poaching from other companies. Kweon notes the ultimate goal is to employ about 300 people in the Los Angeles factory.

Finding the right talent is a challenge not only in sewing, but across the board – and even across industries in what has become known as The Great Resignation. This is especially true for technicians to repair sewing machines. As more work returns to North America, that means more sewing machines in operation. And that means more service technicians are required. One approach to training both sewists and service technicians for sewing machines is being launched by Shimmy Technologies using gamification and a multilingual approach to make training easier, faster and more engaging, all from a mobile platform.

These are just a few of the many innovative activities underway in an environment where the need for innovation and changing the way we do things has become even less negotiable as a result of the pandemic. Supply chain issues, changes in consumer demand, sustainability and time to market are driving change in textiles and apparel. Some will take an agile approach and adapt their processes to a changing market environment; others will not.

Textiles & apparel is a vast global industry, and change does not happen quickly. But there are encouraging signs, and we are hopeful that the industry at large will make the right choices – both from an economic and an environmental perspective.