Why is the entire industry trapped in high inventory? The root cause lies in the order-to-order model commonly used in the clothing industry. Generally speaking, clothing companies hold two ordering fairs a year in spring, summer, autumn and winter. The goods ordered at the meeting are new products that will be launched in six months. The brand design team guesses the popular elements and colors in six months, and the retailers guess the preferences of local consumers. Consumers' minds are inherently elusive, and they actually have to make predictions more than half a year in advance. You can imagine how biased such predictions are. The essence of retail is the matching of people and goods. If goods cannot accurately match consumer needs, inventory backlog is the inevitable result. No wonder the entire apparel industry is under the spell of high inventory.
How to break the situation? We have to start from the fundamental principle of matching people and goods. From the supply side of goods, predicting demand is not as good as responding quickly. Since the forecast is biased, it is very risky to produce a large number of goods in advance. It is better to quickly produce to meet the demand after receiving clear demand signals from customers. However, this model requires the enterprise's supply chain to be flexible and quick to respond. The large-scale production lines currently popular in the clothing industry are simply not qualified for this model.
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