Fashion Digitisation: Putting Fabric First Will Prove Essential to Navigating an Increasingly More Complex and Fast-Paced Industry Landscape

Fashion’s Future is Digital

Following the pandemic, the subsequent huge rise in costs to materials, energy and shipping, as well as continuing geo-political uncertainty across the globe, has undoubtedly led most fashion manufacturers to quickly acknowledge that in order to survive, they would have to digitise their processes as much as possible to mitigate risk and remain agile and profitable. As a result, the rapid digitisation of the fashion supply chain has ensued at a lightning pace. New solutions are evolving fast and existing technologies are being consistently enhanced to rid the industry of its notoriously outdated and fundamentally analogue ways of doing business so it can confidently forge a successful future.

Nonetheless, although most fashion manufacturers are at different stages of their digital journey and need to fully assess what would make the biggest difference to their businesses, there is one particular technology that stands out from all the rest in being able to directly impact an apparel manufacturer’s bottom line in the fastest and most effective way – and that is in the area of fabric planning.

Fabric Costs: The Hidden Challenge

With fabric costs accounting for a staggering 60-70 percent of a manufacturer’s overall outlay, the fact remains that the successful digitisation of fabric-related processes emerges at the most fundamental strategy to enhance fashion manufacturers’ profitability, as well as reduce waste and provide a viable solution to evidence new compliance requirements.  Precise fabric optimisation is not a nice to have – it is a must have. Without accurate and timely estimations of a manufacturer’s most costly investment at the buying stage, manufacturers suffer from either excess fabric leftovers, which contribute to dead stock and environmental waste; or shortages that can disrupt production schedules and result in significant financial losses due to expensive, emergency re-orders.

Previous practices of ordering surplus fabric to safeguard against production losses and to avoid short shipments are no longer viable, when brands are demanding increasingly smaller, more varied style orders in shorter timeframes. Moreover, regulators as well as consumers are starting to forensically analyse the fashion supply chain’s sustainability claims.  With the fashion industry generating a reported 92 million tons of solid waste annually, no manufacturer wants to be called to task for exacerbating the industry’s poor environmental track record by incinerating huge amounts of deadstock or assigning it to landfills.

The Pitfalls of Traditional Fabric Estimation

Historically, the fabric estimation process has been linear, analogue and fraught with challenges. Manufacturers create pattern in CAD based on tech packs, establish standard ratios (cut plans), create markers and incorporate buffers to account for production variances. More traditional methods are reliant on manual calculations and experience-based guesswork.  This often leads to errors where discrepancies between booked and utilised fabric continue to persist, invariably leading to either wastage or fabric shortages.

A primary challenge lies in the consumption gap between booked fabric and actual usage. Reducing this gap, even marginally, can significantly enhance profit margins while making a real difference to sustainability programmes.

Harnessing Cloud Intelligence and Complex Algorithms

To overcome these challenges fashion manufacturers must look to leverage intelligent technology solutions that enable the integration and analysis of vast amounts of fabric buying and cutting data so they can create more accurate fabric estimations in an agile way. By utilising historical data in past orders, manufacturers can predict fabric size breakdowns and consumption patterns more accurately ensuring that only the necessary amount of fabric is booked – minimising waste, maximising profits and optimising resource utilisation in one fell swoop.

Moreover, advanced algorithms can generate optimised cut plans from millions of possible combinations, ensuring efficient use of fabric rolls and reducing remnants. Intelligent roll allocation and remnant planning not only significantly reduces fabric waste, they also enable manufacturers to handle smaller and more varied order quantities quickly and efficiently. This agility will become a prerequisite in the years ahead to meet the diverse demands of more complex market conditions.

Meeting Regulatory Standards with Digital Precision

As global legislation around waste and sustainability compliance tightens, the fashion supply chain will no longer be able to green-wash its way out of possible scrutiny. Stringent regulations from the EU and US will put the spotlight on every large brand and its supply chain partners on how they are curbing waste and pollution.  As fabric plays the most fundamental role in the environmental impact of the industry, efficient fabric management tools should be prioritised above all other solutions within a fashion manufacturer’s arsenal of digital transformation tools.  Simply put – the production, use and disposal of fabric contributes more to the industry’s poor carbon footprint and waste generation credentials than any other factor – and regulators and more informed consumers already know this.

By integrating fabric buying and cutting operations into a single cloud-based platform, manufactures can track and optimise real-time fabric usage and wastage quickly. This holistic approach ensures that all stages of the production lifecycle are fully aligned – reducing the likelihood of discrepancies and ensuring that waste and sustainability claims and/or targets can be reported and evidenced successfully.

The Future of Fashion Manufacturing

In the race to keep up with an ever-accelerating fashion industry, digitising fabric-related processes is no longer an option; it is essential. Fabric management, with its profound impact on both costs and environmental sustainability, must be the cornerstone of any digital transformation strategy. As consumer demand for faster fashion and greater style variety grows, manufacturers that cling to outdated manual-based methods will struggle to keep pace. By embracing advanced cloud-based solutions to prioritise intelligent fabric planning, fashion manufacturers will not only enhance their profit margins and meet stringent regulatory standards around sustainability effectively – they will also be more agile and capable of meeting unexpected and potentially more complex industry demands in the future.

*This article first appeared on Fibre2Fashion website.