Supply Chain Management Innovations

Today I learned about supply chain management and how stores, like H&M and Zara, are able to quickly bring in new inventory every week to keep the fashion cycling. H&M has two major clothing lines for the spring and fall season, but have smaller sub-collections that they release during each of these seasons. By making these sub-collections, these stores have to predict what the current trends will be during these seasons. This raised the question to me as to how these stores predict future trends. What I found was that several stores use websites like WGSN and to help them to predict the upcoming fashion trends. According to fibre2fashion, "fashion & trend forecasting is the prediction of mood, behavior and buying habits of the consumer at particular time of season". Stores like Target and Macy's even use these websites to predict the trends. These trend predictions are made years in advance, so stores are able to know the popular trends during that year, before the year even comes.

Fashion Forecasting