Supply Chain Agility towards Global Outsourcing within Fast Fashion industry, a case study at Gina Tricot

Abstract: The turbulent and highly volatile market in the fashion industry creates swift changes in consumer demands. Globalization has been an important development and the Outsourcing of fashion products is also an integral part of the world of fast fashion industry. The suc-cess of fast fashion greatly depends on identifying a trend quickly and translating it into the market before the trend is over. This illustrates the importance of agility within fashion firms or organizations. Gina Tricot is one of Scandinavia’s fastest growing fashion industries and it focuses on women’s fashion wares. Their ability to forecast forthcoming trends with their own designs, and their ability to manage lead times cost effectively has made them triumphant in this in-dustry. The reputation of newly designed garments arriving in the shop each week makes them attractive to the customers. Harmonization of the production process and newly de-signed garments at an affordable price is achieved by the outsourcing of products in coop-eration with independent suppliers in Asia and Europe. However the outsourcing activity may cause a longer lead time and the colossal risks of long distance transportation. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the supply chain agility towards global outsourcing of the Gina Tricot Company and also to llok at the differences between Zara and Gina Tricot. A case study using a qualitative data was chosen for this study. To get a deeper under-standing of Gina Tricot's supply chain agility towards global outsourcing and of its supply chain pipeline, a couple of interviews were used prior to the main study. Personal semi-structured interview was conducted along with a emails and phone conversations as well. The respondents were the head of Gina Tricot’s logistic department and the head of the purchasing department at the head office in Borås. Gina Tricot manages their supply chain agility by which they handle the supply chain net-work and also quickly respond to consumer demand. The main purpose of the firm’s supply chain network towards global outsourcing is to get low priced quality product delivered promptly to the customer at the right time. Their supply chain is cost effective and with ef-fective management results in less lead times because most of the suppliers are from the Far East. Its supply chain agility greatly depends on the ability to know what the customer wants, on the reliability of information sharing between networks, and on its flexibility.