Whether it is haute couture, ready-to-wear, activewear, intimate apparel or accessories, the fashion industry is undergoing a major transformation. With dynamic market shifts driven by continually changing demographics, purchasing power, and end-customer centric wants and needs, the fashion business is being reevaluated with respect to both supply chains and value chains covering fibers-fabrics-textiles-apparel-retail. In addition, there is a significant impact on macroeconomic and microeconomic business cycle(s) due to direct influencing factors such as creativity, innovation, advanced manufacturing processes, focus on sustainability with minimizing carbon footprint, and omni-channel sales – all of which are being driven by blockchain technology, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and related areas.
For fashion entrepreneurs, the current market scenario and outlook is both promising as well as being full of potential opportunities to create, develop, produce, distribute and deliver a wide range of fashion products, services and accessories in order to capture increased market share. It is both essential and mission critical for fashion entrepreneurs to address key elements and influencing factors by properly developing viable business roadmap(s) which address both strategies and execution plans for their fashion businesses and enterprises.
From a “top-down” perspective, a definitive commercial market assessment must be carried out which includes, but not limited to, global-regional-national supply, demand, pricing, elasticity of demand, end-customer segmentation and purchasing power analysis, existing and planned infrastructure for supply chains and value chains, regulatory policy and framework, competitive scenario and evaluation, and any other influencing market factors.
From a “bottom-up” perspective, a preparation of detailed business plan from initial startup onwards, covering business-revenue model(s), determining capital costs (CAPEX) and operating costs (OPEX), economic modeling and robust financial analysis with investment/profitability indicators coupled with sensitivity/scenario analysis, plan for development-execution-operations of new business enterprise projects, valuation of intellectual property rights (IPR) and benchmarking, corporate and investment structure, corporate governance, compliance to statutory fiduciary requirements, review of technical and commercial risks with mitigation analysis, transactional contracts and agreements with creditworthy wholesale and retail customers along with a definitive plan for capital formation, allocation, deployment and ensuring return of capital with investment returns.
With proper strategy, planning, and execution, fashion entrepreneurs can develop and implement both “bankable” and “sustainable” brands and companies in the short-term to long-term.