A prominent survey of 250 senior retail officials in the US and the UK reveals a dangerous interval in the fashion supply chain visibility, efficiency and compliance, according to the ‘Boosting Margin’ whitepaper by Event Denison.
The survey by 250 fashion officers in the US and Britain reveals the major supply chain interval from the 250 fashion authorities: the rate of only 22 percent is efficient, while there is 25 percent less or no visibility. Manual tracking prevails, and traceability, lack of labor, and compliance remains. Despite the call for technical investment and supplier cooperation, the European Union’s DPP is about half untrained for rules.
Only 22 percent of the respondents ranked their supply chain as ‘skilled and responsible’. Conversely, 30 percent described him as’ highly problematic with regular disruption ‘,’ C-Level officials expressed the most strongly (41 percent).
Visibility remains a main challenge. Only 24 percent of brands report full item-level visibility within factories and distribution centers, while 50 percent claim only partial visibility. One of the four fashion leaders (25 percent) confesses to limited or no supply chain insight.
Technologies are 42 percent in the UK and less than 38 percent in the US, which still rely on the spreadsheet for inventory tracking, and 20 percent of all the respondents continue to use manual data entry as per reports.
The traceability of raw materials quoted by 24 percent of all respondents emerged as the most pressure challenge. This was followed by labor and resource shortage (22 percent), customs and compliance issues (20 percent), and inventory loss or shrinkage (19 percent).
Regional trends suggest that the UK brands are more worried by labor shortage (27 percent), while American brands prioritize raw material traceability (24 percent).
There are direct business effects of item-level deficiency lack of visibility. About 30 percent conflict with final-mining apparel labeling changes, and 25 percent compliance risk due to insufficient traceability. In the US, a 33 percent report reports difficulties in identifying disruptions in real -time, compared to just 20 percent in the UK.
Despite these challenges, 65 percent of all respondents believe that more cooperation with suppliers and investment in visibility technologies – such as RFID tags, blockchain and IOT sensors – will significantly improve proficiency. Nevertheless, the readiness for regulatory compliance is weak.
About half of all fashion retailers (49 percent) are unprepared for the upcoming Digital Products Passport (DPP) rules of the European Union, with only 19 percent of the US and 14 percent of the UK companies said they are ‘very well prepared’.
Fibre2fashion News Desk (HU)