Fashion-Specific Supply Chain Challenges and Fast Fashion as a Suitable Solution

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (The Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences), course: Supply Chain Management / Operations Management, language: English, abstract: Imagine a stranger approaches you with an investment opportunity. For a substantial amount of your assets you can purchase his Mintmelon farm and enter the business of growing and selling Mintmelons. Mintmelons are an entirely new creation. The man says they taste delicious, but unfortunately he doesn't have any left for you to try. Hence it will take a full year's effort to grow them - Mintmelons are immensely complicated plants. And if that wasn't enough, they can only be harvested in July and remain edible until August. Thereafter, the Mintmelons rot away and are only good as organic waste. You would have to work on the Mintmelon farm for an entire year without knowing whether anybody in the world would actually like or want to buy Mintmelons. And if you don't manage to sell them off within a few weeks, you are ruined. So, does becoming a Mintmelon-farmer sound like a good idea to you?The fashion industry has a lot in common with the cultivation of Mintmelons. Its main supply chain challenges are exceptional in their combination. Few industries are to such an extent subject to change, insecurity and external influence like the fashion industry. Recent developments caused a great rise in pace and instability. The development and implementation of modern supply chain approaches is becoming increasingly inevitable. In the last decades a set of strategies emerged that may have the capabilities to address these challenges and even turn them into competitive advantages. All of them essentially aim at increasing responsiveness and agility. The currently most comprehensive strategy in that area is called Fast Fashion . The purpose of this paper is to explain how Fast Fashion evolved, what sub-strategies constitute it and how it can solve the problems of the industry. The focus hereby is on strategic aspects of Supply Chain Management. To highlight as many facets as possible a wide range of literature was reviewed, from highly theoretical articles and quantitative models to rather practical papers and case studies. Firstly, specific challenges of the fashion industry will be discussed. After that, Fast Fashion and the way it functions is explained in detail. In the end, a short case study is presented to illustrate how Fast Fashion works in practice and what results it can generate.