Faster fashion: How to shorten

the apparel calendar

To get new styles into stores more quickly, fashion companies must improve internal
collaboration, tap into consumer insights, and start to digitize the value chain.

Achim Berg, Miriam Heyn, Felix Rölkens, and Patrick Simon

MAY 2018 • RETAIL © Hero Images/Getty Images

 When Burberry and Tom Ford began experimenting The planning, design, and development phase is
with the fashion-industry concept known as “see typically the longest and has the widest variability
now, buy now” in 2016, their efforts were met among companies (exhibit). Therefore, that’s
with a little skepticism and a lot of excitement. where the greatest potential for compressing the
The thinking was that consumers, especially calendar lies.
millennials, have become accustomed to instant
gratification and are therefore much less willing The length of the end-to-end fashion cycle depends
to wait several months to own the latest runway on a number of factors, including the company’s
styles. The so-called “fast fashion” companies—the business model and retailer requirements for the
likes of Forever 21, H&M, Inditex, and Primark— assortment. For example, vertically integrated
were already producing replicas of fresh-off-the- players (such as H&M and Zara) can make decisions
runway items and selling them in stores in a matter faster and skip the sell-in phase because they operate
of weeks, and consumers were rewarding their their own stores. Even within a brand, different
speed to market: revenues at those companies rose product groups might follow different calendars:
8.2 percent in 2017 in aggregate, whereas overall women’s tops are typically refreshed more frequently
apparel retail grew only about 3.5 percent in that than women’s jeans, for instance. Basic items (such as
same period.1 With a see-now-buy-now sales model, plain white T-shirts) don’t have to follow a seasonal
luxury fashion companies, too, could capitalize on collection rhythm because sales of such items are
the media coverage sur-rounding Fashion Week fairly consistent and easier to predict. Still, some
events in New York, London, Milan, and Paris, and basics retailers—Uniqlo, for one—are constantly
translate the buzz into full-fledged sales campaigns. finding ways to shorten their fashion cycle.

But skeptics wondered whether “see now, buy Speeding up each phase
now” could work for higher-end apparel. Indeed, it To shorten time to market, the first step is to define a
hasn’t been an unqualified success. A handful of viable target length for the full fashion cycle, taking
designers, including Tom Ford, have since reversed into account the company’s business model, retailer
course, citing the misalignment between the timing requirements for the assortment, and benchmarks
of Fashion Week and store-shipping schedules. from competitors—especially those that have
Still, more than 15 leading fashion companies are successfully shortened their own calendars. Once
continuing to experiment with “see now, buy now.” Is the target length for the full cycle has been set, the
it a feasible model for the long term? next step is to eliminate time-wasting activities and
accelerate processes in each phase.
Our answer is yes—so long as fashion companies
are willing to embark on a dramatic transformation Planning, design, and product development
of their processes and mind-sets. Shortening the In this first phase, the finance team sets financial
fashion cycle isn’t a quick-fix undertaking. targets for the collection while the creative teams
for each division (such as women’s, men’s, and
The phases of the fashion cycle children’s) determine the creative direction of the
Broadly speaking, the fashion cycle consists of season’s collection: What narratives or themes will
three phases: planning, design, and product develop- the collection embody? What will be the overall
ment; sell-in; and production and delivery. The look and feel? What fabrics and color palettes will it
length of each phase varies widely by company. A feature? The creative teams also develop a master
phase can be as short as 12 weeks or as long as 30. plan specifying the breadth and depth of their

2 Faster fashion: How to shorten the apparel calendar

 Universal 2018
Faster fashion: How to shorten the apparel calendar
Exhibit 1 of 1

Exhibit The duration of an end-to-end fashion cycle widely varies by company.

Fashion cycle duration, weeks1

Planning, design, and product development Sell-in Production and delivery

Global hybrid fashion company 32 10 19 61

Global denim company 29 10 17 56

Global premium apparel brand 19 8 20 47

European hybrid brand 22 2 20 44

Global premium lifestyle brand 12 6 18 36

US lifestyle brand 15 2 17 34

Global vertical fast-fashion brand 11 2

1 Approximate.

respective collections, along with price ranges. An business constraints. Advanced analytical tools
example: the spring 2019 menswear collection will and techniques can help increase the reliability of
have 12 styles of pants—four each in shorts, casual forecasts by isolating the factors that drove sales,
khakis, and dress pants—all in the $85 to $95 range. down to the SKU level: Did a particular shirt sell
well because of its color? Cut? Logo design? Was it
At some apparel companies, the finance and creative especially popular in a certain city or neighborhood,
teams work separately, with each team unaware or with a specific type of customer? The most
of what the other is doing. This often results in forward-looking companies analyze additional
inefficiencies and rework. Leading-edge companies types of publicly available data such as online
have instead established a central merchandising searches, social media, competitor websites, and
team composed of staff from both the financial and online product ratings. These analyses not only
creative sides of the business. This team collaborates unearth nascent trends but also warn of receding
on the creative direction, the financial targets, and trends. Some fashion companies have even begun
the master plan; they agree on parameters early in experimenting with natural-language processing
the fashion cycle. This collaboration can cut out and visual processing, although these technologies
unnecessary iterations and shave up to five weeks off can’t yet reliably translate text or images (for
the initial phase. example, from tweets or Instagram posts by
influencers) into clear, actionable insights.
The central team typically reviews sales data
from the previous year, which can yield valuable Generating consumer insights is one thing; instilling
consumer insights and form the basis of sensible a culture of insight-driven decision making is quite

Faster fashion: How to shorten the apparel calendar 3

 another. It represents a major change, particularly person. It becomes even more attractive as the
for fashion companies, which tend to see their technology improves and renderings become more
business as creative rather than data driven. The detailed and truer to life (see sidebar, “Sprinting
most successful companies are those that strike toward a shorter fashion cycle”).
a balance between art and science. They invest in
advanced-analytics systems and tools and, just as Production and delivery
important, they ensure that there are “translators” Opportunities for shortening the production and
and “connecters” within the organization—people delivery phase are fewer, but still meaningful. One
who are data savvy, thoroughly understand the lever is disciplined manufacturer management.
company’s business processes, and have credibility Leading fashion companies have so tightly
among all internal decision makers—to bridge the integrated their manufacturing partners into their
gaps between analysts and designers. business that manufacturers take responsibility
for a variety of tasks and approvals. In some cases,
Armed with data and insights, the company then manufacturers bypass several sign-offs from the
produces the first prototypes of the new collection. head office, thereby cutting as many as ten days
We’ve found that this process can be compressed from the production process. In other cases, fashion
by up to three weeks if the company opts to create companies have placed specific tasks (such as quality
mostly digital prototypes rather than physical ones. control) on-site at the factories, eliminating the need
to ship samples and products back and forth between
Sell-in factory floor and design studio or corporate office.
Digital prototypes, which are 3-D images on a screen,
can shorten the sell-in phase as well, by lessening the As for capacity planning and booking, the earlier and
need for producing and shipping physical samples. the more detailed, the better. At many companies,
With digital prototyping, fashion companies the design teams for various divisions each have
can showcase the collection to smaller retailers their own schedule and process for informing
remotely; those customers can then place their vendors of their needs for fabric, materials, and
orders without having to travel to a showroom at all. factory capacity. By contrast, at best-practice
For larger customers, fashion companies can create a companies, a central supply-chain planning team
few physical samples but show most of the collection consolidates orders from across the divisions. Much
via customized digital showrooms. as a central merchandising team helps shorten the
planning and product-development phase, a central
Initially, buyers may balk at being shown digital supply-chain team helps compress the production
prototypes instead of being able to touch, feel, and phase. The team can approach vendors with a single
try on every item in the collection. But we’ve found view of what the company’s needs are, as early as six
that buyers come to appreciate the fact that 3-D months in advance of production.
design allows them to give more input into the design
process: their suggestions can be incorporated into Another lever for shortening the production phase
the designs right away. Many more colors, cuts, and is standardized vendor-management tools and
styles can be tested and prototyped. interfaces. Currently, fashion companies use
a mishmash of legacy systems, making vendor
Digital prototyping is fast and scalable. Using body management cumbersome; a lack of standardization
scans of human models, 3-D technology can show results in wasted time and rework. Each system
sizing, fit, and how the garment would look on a asks for different inputs in different formats, so

4 Faster fashion: How to shorten the apparel calendar

Sprinting toward a shorter fashion cycle
One company aimed to shorten its fashion cycle discuss what the obstacles and pain points were
from 60 weeks to 44, largely by digitizing the and agree on how to do things differently in the next
value chain. To do so, the company used an agile sprint, which would have more ambitious targets. In
approach—a way of working that more closely links one sprint, designers felt that the design software was
conceptualization to implementation through “sprints,” too slow, the rendering of images was poor, and the
or fast-paced units of progress. The idea of a sprint, library of fabrics was too limited. A cross-functional
aside from moving quickly, is to constantly readjust so team of designers, process experts, and IT specialists
that each successive sprint yields better results. worked together to address these pain points.

The company treated each season as a series of agile The company not only achieved its goal of a 44-week
sprints. Prior to each sprint, the team defined the calendar—a goal that some in the organization initially
elements that would be tested. For instance, one test felt was unreachable—but it also produced a smaller
involved digital design and prototyping of one product and less complex assortment. On-time availability
group. The test was conducted in only two of the and production planning improved as well, thanks to
four divisions, on a strict timeline following a “freeze better forecasting that allowed the company to book
and release” logic. After each sprint, the team would factory capacity ahead of time.

the inputs are often incomplete or inaccurate. a change in mind-sets across the organization. In
Companies that have moved toward a single, doing so, they could give the fast-fashion companies
intuitive product-life-cycle management tool— a run—maybe even a sprint—for their money.
one that can accommodate sketches, photos of
comparable products, many types of product
information (on fabric, fit, color and so on)—have
1
According to the 2017 McKinsey Global Fashion Index and
seen tremendous benefits. company annual reports.

Achim Berg is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Frankfurt

office; Miriam Heyn is a partner in the Berlin office, where
Traditional fashion companies must be willing to Felix Rölkens is a consultant; and Patrick Simon is a
not just make cosmetic changes to their calendars, partner in the Munich office.
but also thoroughly examine each of their activities
Copyright © 2018 McKinsey & Company.
and processes. They must also be willing to effect All rights reserved.

Faster fashion: How to shorten the apparel calendar 5

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