TRUE TRANSFORMATION?

“The Maze” by Bottega Veneta : an immersive, product-less experience in Seoul.

In the last 2 weeks, big UK fashion names like Boohoo, Next & ASOS have pinned some challenging results on the current supply chain crisis.

Yet it appears that the learnings from this situation aren’t being taken on board.

ASOS, for example, are responding to their own share plunge by announcing their ambition to grow from a £4bn to a £7bn business within four years.

Their lead strategy to do this?

Supply more product to more territories. Therefore putting further pressure on a creaking supply chain. Not exactly innovative thinking is it?

House of Vans (London) : creative space, concert venue, skate park.

Instead, how about thinking differently about what your brand could be?

What else could you do that may reduce your reliance on an increasingly fragile system?

For me, fashion brands can be about so much more than just pushing out product.

They’ve proved themselves as community-builders, experience artists & industry innovators – all made possible by employing some of the most tuned-in minds on the planet.

So instead of just getting them to push out more t-shirts, why not utilise your existing talent to build out new revenue streams that really align with your brand’s purpose?

For instance:

- creating world-class experiences for your community.

- becoming an education provider in the things that you do so well – such as Product Design, Logistics, People Development.

- advising governments on how they can credibly connect to the needs of young people.

So go from being just a product business, to becoming a centre of excellence across multiple disciplines.

And by all means make lots of cash out of it.