Walking Ramp in Air
Fashion industry is associated with a lot of glitz and glamor. What one wears, how one wears becomes an extension of an individual’s personality. Many times it has been seen that clothes become a tool through which a person expresses himself/herself. However, what goes unnoticed is the fact that beneath the razzmatazz that the fashion brands and labels exude, there is an extremely complex supply-demand paradigm and even more complex supply chain that needs to be addressed.
The complexity of the supply chain in the fashion vertical emerges because of the nature of fashion. New trends come up in the markets in a very rapid succession and sometimes multiple times in a season. Manufacturers need to cater to the customers in accordance with the trends and for that reason the supply chain needs to be extremely agile and resilient. The way food is served piping hot, clothes also need to reach the customers as long as they are in vogue.
When you add the unpredictability of the circumstances and the fluctuation of tariffs to the erratic nature of the industry itself, the supply chain gets even more complicated and difficult to grasp. It is here that airfreight comes into play as a rescuer and addresses a lot of issues that lie latent in the fashion industry apart from offering them the obvious swiftness of the movement.
Fashion brands need to have adequate inventory in hand to serve the customers in a season. And the products need to be kept safe from getting tarnished. If the integrity of the products is given a toss while concentrating on the agile delivery, the value of the investment made for the supply goes into the dumps. We must keep the nature of the garments in mind. They must be handled with care, otherwise because of their nature, they may get easily damaged. Airfreight takes care of this aspect of the industry and uses methods that help in preserving the sanctity of the products.
If we have to cite an example, the method of Garments-on-Hanger is an extremely useful technique that can be leveraged to transport goods from its point of origin to point of destination. Garments need not be folded; they can simply be pressed, put on hangers and packed in a special carton before shipped on an airplane. In this way, the manufacturer is ensured that the quality of the product is not getting compromised in any way.
The factor of agility that comes hand-in-hand with airfreight helps the fashion industry catch up with trends. New trends and new sets of garments can be launched one after the other because the manufacturer is sure that their products are going to reach the end consumers pretty fast and before the trends wane. In this way, companies can make up for the losses that they might have incurred in the previous season.
A whole motley of different kinds of products in terms of colors, sizes, fabrics is innate to the fashion industry. While dealing with this industry, shippers and transporters are also aware of the vast range of goods that they need to handle. Therefore, a granular vision of the shipments that boils down to each and every individual product, is essential to achieve the product integrity. Airfreight is highly in demand with the fashion industry because of this granular perspective that they provide.
The end-to-end visibility that airfreight provides, helps the manufacturers curate a lot of important data pertaining to the sale volume of each type of product, resale value, best sellers et al. It is the detailed emphasis that airfreight puts on each individual SKU, that gets conducive in attaining the specific details. Owing to the analytics that come up through the granular-level tracking, businesses can take key data-driven decisions such as product launching or can take measures so as to render more resilience to their supply chain or can take steps to withstand the inclemency of the situations.
Airfreight comes as a boon in those scenarios when the production unit needs to be relocated or a new market needs to be explored. These situations call for urgency and this urgency can only be addressed with a solution that is as quick-moving as airfreight. This agility of airfreight is also conducive to the fashion industry when it comes to catering to the e-commerce platforms. With the boom of such platforms and the omnichannel logistics, products need to be handed out to the empowered consumers as soon as possible. The care and the precision with which airfreight delivers its goods, goes well with the values and the visions inherent to the omnichannel logistics.
It has been mentioned earlier that airfreight is an extremely viable option to deal with the issue of raising tariff and shifting trade regulations. In order to stay away from the impacts that these economical changes may invite, airfreight has become the go-to solution across all industries and sectors. However, such a scenario may create bottlenecks as the capacity of the airfreight can also come under anvil.
To stay ahead of the competing industries that want to avail the airfreight facilities, the fashion industry either needs to diversify its operations or needs to tie up with the freight forwarders and carriers so that the carriers may prioritize the fashion vertical over others and can provide private services if necessary. The full capacity of the airfreight services needs to be utilized so that complete visibility and authority over inventory are exercised.
The agility and resilience that are innate to the airfreight services are particularly imperative for an industry like the fashion industry that needs to weather a lot of unprecedented circumstances. Fashion industry knows how significant airfreight is to their operations and survival and thus it needs to leverage the best practices of it to reap benefits and scale up their business.
