'LET'S MAKE THE BUSINESS OF FASHION GREAT AGAIN'

These are transformative times for the business of fashion. Consumer behaviours, digitalisation, discounting impact, supply chain snags and sustainability demands are challenging us.

"The larger ecosystem has started terming the fashion business as 'difficult', whereas it was seen a couple of decades back as an area of immense opportunity delivering secular growth. It is time we rethink, reimagine, and remodel our industry and become a great force again. It's time to shake off what - has been and give life to the next Golden Age of Fashion Creation," said Shailesh Chaturvedi, MD & CEO, Arvind Fashions & Convenor, IFF 2024, at a session he was moderating at India's largest fashion retail intelligence event.

The power-packed panel included Rohit Ramesh, Managing Director & Partner, BCG; Suparna Mitra, CEO, Titan Watches & Wearables; Gopal Asthana, CEO, Tata CliQ; Vineet Gautam, CEO, BESTSELLER India; Vishak Kumar, CEO, Madura Fashion and Lifestyle ABFRL.

Suparna Mitra started the discussion with a comment on how the business of fashion has become difficult.

"Things have fundamentally shifted over the last five years according to what the consumer wants. The Covid era. was a complete disruption, but once people emerged from the pandemic, they started re-experiencing the joys of fashion. However, their demands changed, the generation changed and correspondingly the whole D2C startup environment was coming up," she said.

She said that it was time to understand customer behaviour, to understand what the consumer really wants right now, and this is not the traditional consumer who's been buying for 10 or 15 years, but the new age, younger consumer.

"This is why there is a pricing challenge. Since people don't know what their consumers want, they make thousands of everything and eventually are left with unsold stock and then have no choice but to discount," she stated.