Fast Fashion

Fast fashion can be defined as a business model that combinesfour elements:

§  fashionable clothes mostly for consumers under 40;

§  affordable prices in the mid-to-low range;

§  quick response;

§  frequent assortment changes.

Difference between fast fashion and traditional retailing is the way assortments are managed. For many years the industry has worked around the concept of collections. Assortments are updated twice a year: at the beginning of the calendar year, the Spring-Summer collection is introduced; at the end of the summer the Fall-Winter collection is released. This industry-wide pace of change has been supported by design (cool hunting), communication (catwalks and store mock-ups where media and wholesale customers are invited), sales and marketing (catalogs, advertising) that follow similar biannual patterns.



Source: Caro and Mart´ınez-de-Alb´eniz (2013)

Fast-fashion players rely much less on collection advertising and wholesale channels. As a result, they are able to design, produce and distribute new products dynamically, both at the beginning and the middle of the season.

Fast-fashion retailers mostly sell products at affordable prices – i.e., they sell “cheap fashion”– so the posted prices at different retailers are usually within the same price range. Therefore, the main difference in pricing strategies across fast-fashion retailers is whether they use in-season promotions and markdowns or not. Regardless of the in-season policy, fast-fashion retailers usually have well-announced clearance sales at the end of the regular season in which markdowns are introduced to liquidate stock and free up space for the new season.