Indian Fashion is at a cross roads as consumer profile is getting
blurred between a metro city customer with Tier I and Tier II cities due to increased penetration of internet, according to deliberation by experts on Day 1 of the India Fashion Forum 2019, here on Wednesday.
The changing consumer profile is also impacting the buying trends with increased volume buying for value garments than for premium garments. The shift is also leading to huge wastage of unused garments, said Devangshu Dutta, Founder, Third Eyesight, at the inaugural session of the forum today.
“Globally, about half of all products are primarily unwanted and are sold at a discount while 40 percent of clothes are rarely or never worn. A single piece of clothing could be responsible for
consuming 2,500-4,000 litres of water,” Dutta said.
Fashion is the 2nd most polluting industry after oil. Repair, Recycle and Reuse is the mantra for the future of fashion garments. However, there is a fear of unknown uncertainty if the
consumption growth is slowing down, Dutta said.
The fashion and lifestyle market size is expected to double by 2022 from $201 billion in 2017 depending upon the way fashion companies converge their physical and digital retail and reach out to the discerning Indian consumer, be it rural or urban.
The theme of this year’s IFF 2019 is ‘Innovate the Future of Fashion’ with focus on a ‘six- point game-plan’ that includes first mover advantage, fashion, width in merchandise over
depth, customer research, end-to-end technology and brand experience.
India Business of Fashion Report 2019, launched at the India Fashion Forum 2019 being held at Hotel Renaissance, Mumbai is a research manual for the fashion industry. Through key studies, the report highlights the strategic movements in India’s fashion segment and the scope of fashion retail in the country, while giving an accurate forecast for the future of the industry.
A report titled ‘Data & Analytics Is Reshaping the Indian Fashion Retail Industry’ was released by PwC India at the conference that underlined the fact that fashion retailers need to use analytics to generate in-depth insights across the value chain of their operations, including procurement, supply chain, sales and marketing, store operations and customer management.
“Analytics is typically scattered throughout the operations of retail organizations, leading to redundant costs and suboptimal adoption. They prevent organizations from achieving the scale necessary to completely nurture analytics talent and make the most out of their data. In order to successfully embed analytics in an organization, it is important to create linkages between application workflows, business intelligence report analytical models,” the report said.
