An efficient fashion apparel supply chain is the need of the hour

How long ago did the fashion industry start? This is a question we frequently ask ourselves, but perhaps the answer is that fashion has always played a distinct role in our lifestyle depending on the stage of life we are in.
Fashion is constantly changing; it never goes out of style. So why are we talking about something that is so pervasive in our daily lives? Purely because we wanted to capture the tremendous changes that the Indian fashion and leisure industry has been witnessing in recent years.
Although fashion is replaceable and ever-changing, the reality is that fashion has been and will continue to be a significant aspect of our lives. Meanwhile, the current state of the fashion industry necessitates an efficient supply chain to match the demand and fast-paced sales of e-commerce platforms.

Fashion Trends Post Covid
The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic had made a huge shift in every area of our lives— Work from home quickly entered people’s daily routines, and convenience quickly took precedence — including our fashion and style.
Companies came bearing a variety of fast-fashion items, however, the flexibility of consumers and corporations is what is most impressive.
Despite the fact that we all indulged ourselves in a significant amount of online buying, the pandemic compelled everyone to switch to e-commerce. This has driven both the volume and value of online shopping and e-commerce to increase.
The online fashion business is still expanding, as seen by the Fashion E-commerce Report from e-commerce focused supply chain. SaaS technology platform Unicommerce, also found that order volume increased by 51% and gross merchant value (GMV) increased by 45% in FY21 compared to FY20.
Kapil Makhija, CEO of Unicommerce, was quoted as stating in response to the report, “Fashion segment is one of the biggest contributors to the e-commerce industry with the highest order volume. This report sheds light on the changing consumer buying patterns and preferences, rising adoption of D2C and omnichannel and new segments in the online fashion space.”
Unicommerce said these websites have reported 66 percent order volume growth and 77 percent GMV growth in FY 2021 as compared to the previous financial year. Compared to websites, marketplaces have reported 45 percent order volume growth and 33 percent GMV growth for FY-2021.
Another fashion and lifestyle trend is a shift to sustainable fashion through green decisions, upcycling, and repurposing items.
According to Sunil Sethi, President FDCI, “We are promoting and helping people to buy more responsibly. Sustainable fashion and being ‘vocal for local’ are the trending buzzwords on the internet. This has led to a shift from fast fashion to ethical fashion.”
A recent report by Global Fashion Agenda said that the fashion industry can be 80 percent sustainable by 2030 with increased investment in existing recycling technologies and infrastructures.

How Safexpress Works?
Keeping in mind the fast-paced e-commerce service for apparel and lifestyle, Safexpress understands the need of urgency and takes immense pride in offering one-stop solution for all the logistics needs that significantly reduces the transit time for distribution across the supply chain to ensure these products reach the shelves on time.
Our customised ‘Stock2Shelf’ service provides comprehensive supply chain service for the lifestyle industry and benefits all malls, shopping outlets, and e-commerce sites. We oversee the movement of retail and lifestyle goods, quality inspection, professional packaging, security clearance at malls, unpacking services and reverse pickups even on Sundays & Holidays and ease the work of retailers.
What is fascinating to note is that Tier-II and Tier-III cities have seen rapid growth and distribution for fashion and lifestyle apparels and items.
According to the Unicommerce report, Tier-II locations experienced 118 percent volume growth, while Tier-III and higher destinations experienced 192 percent volume growth.
A 2022 report by McKinsey shows the growth trend as well. India is on the rise- its growing middle class, powerful manufacturing sector, and increasingly tech-savvy people have made it an essential destination for fashion companies.
In fact, the textile sector in India employs a staggering 4.5 crore people, including 35.22 lakh people who work with handlooms.
Companies are conducting their own study in the meanwhile to optimise the value chain. This updated version of the patented end-to-end traceability technology is used to track textile raw materials. We understand the supply chain & logistics needs of the Indian Fashion and Lifestyle industry segment and serve as its backbone to meet the same. From providing consulting solutions to improvise the distribution model for bringing efficiency and recommending ways to deliver better service quality to their customers, offering customized solutions such as ‘Direct2Retailer’, ‘Appointment Delivery’, ‘To-pay Delivery’, ‘delivery to the remotest corners of the country’, Sunday/ Holiday delivery, ‘Draft-on-Delivery’ & ‘Reverse Logistics’. The objective of services provided by Safexpress is to offer smooth, safe, express & value-added doorstep deliveries to anywhere in India.

To read the entire story, visit http://www.safexpress.com/IndustryMagazine.html