Key Sectors of Fashion Industry (2024)

Fashion Industry and Its Key Sectors

Shubham Anil Jain
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited
Bangalore, India
Email: shubhamajain125@gmail.com

Introduction:
Fashion is one of the most creative and fascinating field of art and expression. It is a form of art and skill where one can use their own unique imagination and skills to create new styles, trends and outfits. Fashion is best described as the style or styles of pairing clothes in a classy and unique way. New designer’s garments and dresses that are created by fashion popular designers all over the world are sold in the world’s malls and markets. The industry of fashion designing includes various works related to the world of fashion such as designing, manufacturing, marketing, retailing, advertising, and promoting all sorts of clothing everywhere.

Fashion Industry are considered as multi-billion-dollar multinational organization committed to producing and selling clothing. Some people differentiate between the fashion industry (which produces “high fashion”) and the garment industry (which produces ordinary clothing or “mass fashion”), but the distinctions between them were blurred by the year 1970s.

Today, the diversity and vastness of the industry have paved the way for more types of clothing to be produced everywhere. Fashion has become a regular everyday thing, not just for the select few.

You can think of any piece of clothing, and it has a version in hundreds, if not thousands, of brands and can be bought in a variety of ways. There are brick-and-mortar shops and online stores where you can purchase these pieces of clothing. You can even buy all types of clothes under one brand, just like Justice carries a variety of girls’ clothing. From denim to activewear, swimwear, and even dresses and jumpsuits.

Key Sectors of Fashion Industry:

1. Production of textiles:
In the textile industry, a large number of manufacturers create different types of fabrics which are being used in the world of fashion. Natural fibers that include wool, cotton, silk and linen are greatly used in the fashion industry. Along with natural fibres, synthetic fibers are also in huge demand that include nylon, acrylic and polyester. Nowadays, people show huge interest in eco-friendly fashion. Due to the rise in interest in such fashion, eco-friendly textiles and fashion is very popular these days.

Currently, fabrics are produced with a wide range of effects and design through different processes such as, dyeing, weaving, printing, and other manufacturing and finishing processes. Together with fashion forecasters, textile manufacturers work well in advance of the apparel production cycle to produce fabrics with colours, textures, and other qualities that anticipate consumer demand.

The fashion industry is nothing without textiles and fabrics. It’s the building block of the fashion industry, just like the family is the building block of society. The raw material is needed to produce magnificent couture pieces; most of the time, it’s how a designer is known.

2. Fashion design and manufacturing:
As per this industry is concerned, it is the second Key Sector of the Fashion Industry. Historically, it is analyzed that, very few fashion designers have become famous “name” designers, such as Coco Chanel or Calvin Klein, who create innovative high-fashion collections, whether couture or ready-to-wear. These designers plays an important role while setting trends in fashion, but, contrary to popular belief, they do not dictate new styles; rather, they endeavour to design clothes that will meet consumer demand. The vast majority of designers work in anonymity for manufacturers, as part of design teams, adapting trendsetting styles into marketable garments for average consumers.

Designers create inspiration from a wide range of sources, which majorly includes film and television costumes, street styles, and active sportswear. For most designers, traditional design methods, such as doing sketches on paper and draping fabric on mannequins, have been supplemented or replaced by computer aided design techniques. These allow designers to rapidly make changes to a proposed design’s silhouette, fabric, trimmings, and other elements and afford them the ability to instantaneously share the proposed changes with colleagues, whether in the next room or on another continent.

3. Fashion retailing:
Once the clothes have been designed and get ready, now it’s time to sell them in market. So, here the retailing comes in picture. The business of buying clothes from manufacturers and selling them to customers is known as retail. Retailers make initial purchases for resale three to six months before the customer is able to buy the clothes in-store.

Fashion Retailing is directly the link or a bridge between the fashionable product manufacturer and the end consumer. Fashion Retailers may buy fashion merchandise from various manufactures (Vendors) directly import merchandises from all over the country their own brands. Fashion retailers must constantly be aware of customer’s desires and needs. They must notice changes in people’s living patterns and tastes.

4. Fashion marketing:
Fashion marketing means, managing the flow of merchandise from the initial selection of designs to be produced to the presentation of products to retail customers, with the objective of maximizing the sales of the company and profitability. It is analyzed that, successful fashion marketing completely depends on understanding the requests, choices and desires of the customers and providing them with those products that match their demands. Marketers use sales tracking data, attention to media coverage, focus groups, and other means of ascertaining consumer preferences to provide feedback to designers and manufacturers about the type and quantity of goods to be produced.

Marketing operates at both the wholesale and retail levels. Companies that do not sell their own products at retail must place those products at wholesale prices in the hands of retailers, such as boutiques, department stores, and online sales companies.

5. Fashion merchandising:
Merchandising aims to maximize sales and profitability by making consumers to buy a company’s products. As per the definition of the term, merchandising involves selling the right product, at the right price, at the right time and place, to the right customers. Fashion merchandisers must thus utilize marketers’ information and data about customer choices as the basis for decisions about such things as stocking appropriate merchandise in adequate but not excessive quantities, offering items for sale at attractive but still profitable prices, and discounting overstocked goods.

Merchandising also involves presenting goods attractively and accessibly through the use of store windows, in-store displays, and special promotional events. Merchandising experts must be able to respond to flow in demand by rapidly acquiring new stocks of the favored product. An inventory-tracking computer program in a department store in London, for example, can trigger an automatic order to a production facility in Shanghai for a certain quantity of garments of a specified type and size to be delivered in a matter of days.

6. Fashion shows:
Nowadays, fashion designers and manufacturers are not restricted to promote their clothes not only to retailers but also to the media and directly to customers. Already in the late 19th century, Paris couture houses began to offer their clients private viewings of the latest fashions. By the early 20th century, not only fashion houses but also department stores regularly conduct fashion shows with professional models. In imitation of Parisian couturiers, ready-to-wear designers in other countries also began mounting fashion shows for an audience that combined private clients, journalists, and buyers. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, fashion shows became more elaborate and theatrical, were held in larger venues with specially constructed elevated runways for the models, and played an increasingly prominent role in the presentation of new fashions.

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Conclusion:
The fashion industry covers many different smaller and more niche industries. Often many people think that, it is just limited to retail/online stores, design houses and brands, and fashion magazines. However, there are other craftspeople and industries in the manufacturing of clothes. Most obviously, there are those that make and sell fabric and notions. When it comes to fashion shows and fashion marketing there are models, stylists, hair stylists, make-up artists, model agents, photographers, and a host of other non-fashion business that all make up a larger fashion eco-system. Currently, the industry and the consumer is constantly evolving. Fashion retailing is no longer just large fashion houses, fashion magazines, and retail stores/catalogs but evolved first with TV channels that sold many goods including fashion, and then with the Internet and online retailing.

References:

1. Fashion Industry and Its Key Sectors, https://www.techpublishnow.com/fashion-industry-and-its-key-sectors/
2. https://bfashionacademy.com/key-sectors-of-fashion-industry/
3. fashion industry, ByValerie SteeleSee AllLast Updated:Oct 26, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/art/fashion-industry
4. https://in.coursera.org/lecture/mafash/fashion-market-segmentation-PPEm1
5. Fashion Industry: 3 Key Sectors of the Fashion Industry, Melita PintoJuly 19, 2022

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