Fast Fashion

Fast fashion is a retail business model built around designing, producing and marketing clothing to bring current style trends to consumers as quickly and cheaply as possible. Companies that use the model, including Shein, H&M, Zara and ASOS, replicate trending styles using low-cost mass-production techniques and rely on tightly optimized supply chains and quick-response manufacturing to get new items into stores faster than competitors relying on traditional production cycles. Operationally, fast-fashion retailers produce merchandise in small batches, keep spare manufacturing capacity in reserve so production can be adjusted quickly to demand, and use category management systems to track what is selling, while investing heavily in marketing through social media and influencer partnerships to keep turnover high. The model has reshaped the wider fashion industry, moving it away from a traditional four-season design cycle toward one in which new trends can reach consumers within weeks of appearing, and by the mid-2020s fast fashion accounted for roughly 36 percent of global clothing purchases and an estimated 178 billion dollars in annual sales.