Consider the poor fashion designer.
In days gone by, like two years ago, s/he could roll into New York for the first of the seasonal fashion shows and dazzle the glitterati with fab fabrics, slick silhouettes, cool colors, and perky prints. S/he'd then have months to turn one-off runway protos into saleable merchandise; s/he could wait and see what "the buy" was like before committing to actually manufacturing merchandise. Like it? See you in the stores in February.
Not anymore.
Today, legions of lurkers sit online, watching sites like style.com, looking for items to knock-off and deliver to stores next month.
Whoops...welcome to the new world of fashion!
And, as you might imagine, designers are none too pleased. Today's NY Times front page article quotes designers like Anna Sui and Tory Burch complaining bitterly about this revoltin' development:
“For me, this is not simply about copying,” said Anna Sui, one of more
than 20 designers who have filed lawsuits against Forever 21, one of
the country’s fastest-growing clothing chains, for selling what they
claim are copies of their apparel. “The issue is also timing. These
copies are hitting the market before the original versions do.”
This is a huge dilemma for designers: the knock-off specialists can deliver their versions to stores faster than the designers can.
Huh? How can that be?
Well...if you need to wait to get orders before you manufacture goods, you can't start until the buyers "vote" on your line. Knock-off specialists just wait for the shows, see what like, read the reviews and pull the trigger. Their manufacturing partners are expert at producing merchandise right from sketches (no tedious measuring, pattern making, "tech packs" or the like)...a process they're still perfecting:
The factory can return finished samples within 14 days. Sometimes the
results are awful, “and sometimes it looks so great you’re just
shocked,” Ms. Anand [principal in a "fast fashion" manufacturing company] said. “They’ve done a better job than the designer.”
The result? Designers are screaming for intellectual property protection, of course. While "copying" is a well-established principle in the fashion business, logos, prints and some patterns are protected by copyright laws. Things like silhouettes, colors and fabric, however, have always been fair game.
But now that companies like Forever 21, Zara and H&M have mastered the skills that yield unmatchable speed-to-market, designers want to change the rules.
I think that's bogus.
Everyone gets to play the game of speed today. If competitors have out-played you, the challenge is to change the way you play the game, not petition to have the rules favor the way you used to play. That's not the way innovation works. Of all people, you'd expect designers to understand that.
But, like the old saw says, it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
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