A diversion into the world of high fashion in this week’s post… It’s an area that everyone who knows me would admit I know nothing about. Nevertheless, here we go…
Martin Schulte, a Partner at Oliver Wyman management consultants, recently posted a fascinating article on, of all things, fashion industry supply chain management. It contains some interesting nuggets for healthcare.
Background: before the 1980’s, couture was customized, reserved for the wealthy, and slow to diffuse into popular culture from biannual fashion shows.
Two disruptive changes shook up the fashion industry in the 1980’s and 1990’s: The first was a move to what is called the “fast-fashion business model” where couture was “translated” from the runways and quickly mass-produced. The second disruption was the emergence of discount realtors like H&M and Topshop, which offered extremely fashion-sensitive clothing (at cut-rate prices) to the masses. These two trends quickly democratized fashion.
