lectra.comWhere fashion and technology meet

Luxury

lectra.comWhere fashion and technology meet

Overview

Specific Challenges

Position paper

Over the last 20 years, luxury has gone from an influential niche to a dominant market force, tripling its consumer base in large part due to the increasing number of upper class and wealthy consumers in emerging economies. This has had a major impact on the way the rest of the industry does business.

Luxury clientele now want to be able to buy looks directly off the catwalk shows they watch live on the internet. They are confident in mixing a signature luxury piece with more affordable garments: a trend dubbed “high-low”. These consumers are less focused on seasons or logos and more interested in where and how the item was made. The steady growth of the luxury fashion industry in China has slowed down signi-ficantly, while the US market is experiencing new buoyancy. Underlining how this sector, marked by a higher price point and a very specific marketing strategy, interplays with economic forces.

The quality and craftsmanship that define luxury can only be achieved when the workflow scale allows each individual

product to be carefully perfected. Yet, today’s consumption cycle is more aligned to that of fast fashion, demanding rapid speed to-

market, responsiveness and flexibility. The test for today’s luxury fashion lies in managing this apparent catch-22.

Within this dilemma the challenges are multiple, constant innovation in the form of high technologies is often paired with a traditional manual

manufacturing process in an effort to preserve a brand’s original hallmarks of luxury. All while staying viable in a highly competitive market.

While a rise in premium and contemporary brands re-positioning themselves as affordable luxury is putting new pressure on traditional luxury brands to differentiate themselves or re-brand as hyper-luxury. Product design must surpass

trends to be trend-setting. Materials and teams in this sector are expensive and errors are costly, both in a financial sense and in terms of putting the brand

(and its reputation) at risk. Strategies to combat copycats and stay ahead of the rest of the market must be put into place, as a sense of exclusivity

and delight must be maintained. Business transformation in the luxury industry is now mandatory as the industry pace has drastically changed.

Lectra in Luxury

A Question of the Next Frontier

Solutions for Luxury

90%OF THE WORLD’S LEADING LUXURY BRANDS WORK WITH LECTRA

Lectra solutions touch all areas of luxury product development. Luxury industry expertise, change management and best-practices combined with innovative technologies are the reasons why 90% of leading global luxury brands work with Lectra. With over 40 years experience in the luxury fashion industry, our experts help companies around the globe streamline process, optimize resources and evolve their business models, while combining innovation and tradition to surpass

the desires of the increasingly sophisticated luxury consumer.

Lectra in FashionWith over 40 year’s of expertise in fashion and apparel, Lectra’s mission is to provide a complete spectrum of design, development, and production solutions to confront 21st-century challenges. From first creative spark to final product, our professional services address an end-to-end process. We support the day-to-day operations of our customers in over 100 countries for around-the-clock process optimization. From fast fashion to luxury to ready-to-wear, Lectra’s 23,000 customers in markets as diverse as casual, sports, outdoor, denim, and lingerie represent every development and sourcing model imaginable. Beyond suppliers and manufacturers, they are the brands you love and the stores where you shop.

Currently only about 20% of luxury goods are focused around a logo and new markers of luxury are coming into the spotlight: namely place of origin, materials and craftsmanship.

True luxury creates individual pieces. Expensive materials such as silk, leather and wool, or high-tech, delicate or textured fabrics make production expensive. Fit must be flawless; cut perfect, color matched precisely.

The creative process needed to consistently achieve new and innovative collections requires a flawless and global collaborative process to effectively draw on the expertise of artisanal skills and know-how while tying in brand history and past collections.

The craftsmanship, management and intricate detail of each piece are the pillars of luxury manufacturing. Yet, reactivity and adaptability are now also necessary to earn the custom and loyalty of the more empowered consumer influenced by real time dissemination of information and a buy it now attitude.

Regions, countries and even stores must have a specially curated mix of styles and sizes requiring impeccable coordination and visibility.

Brands are responding to these new pressures by rethinking their business models and streamlining operations. For example, some are cutting or re-branding diffusion lines.

Reducing time to market through reactivity and agility, working under a lean methodology while protecting quality by mixing modern and traditional manufacturing methods, gives luxury companies the leading edge in today’s market.

Designers are able to push their creativity to the limits through 3D visualization, while achieving perfect fit and quality. Visibility and collaboration are key to protecting brand DNA, while creating future trends.

With a fashion-specific Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution, teams can work on projects in real time, simultaneously and across the globe to maximize their collective expertise taking into account regional specificities.

Luxury houses moving towards a vertical supply chain are able to optimize materials, schedules and final product quality while satisfying the modern consumer’s insatiable desire for transparency.

A cutting room set up under a lean methodology and centralized by cutting-room optimization technology means boutiques can feed sales data into the system to pull products which sell well while controlling stock and minimizing time to market.

www.lectrafashionblog.com@LectraFashion

LectraFashionNetworkwww.facebook.com/LectraOfficial