The traditional world of product and marketing strategies is dead. The sewn product industry’s drive to shorten the supply chain and make products ever cheaper and faster has not only eroded the marketplace in the United States, but also reduced profit margins to below survival levels.
The benefit of this drive has been the development of hundreds of new technologies to support the design, development, production and marketing of sewn products. Most companies deployed these technologies into existing workflows and simply automated their current business model – a model that has demonstrated numerous failures in the current business climate.
The "push" model of design-forecast-produce-inventory-discount no longer works. Profit is no longer a function of creating the best product designs as much as it depends on having the best and most integrated business designs, business designs that focus on enhancing the value proposition for the customer. This requires shaping best practices - understanding and then leveraging emerging technologies, new distribution channels and a company’s core competencies - around customer priorities. Manufacturers must focus on the development of products and services that are so unique and important that customers are willing to pay a premium to own them.
This fundamental paradigm shift is in reality a tremendous opportunity for companies willing to explore and deploy the new product and marketing opportunities enabled by emerging technologies. This integrated business design leverages the core styles and manufacturing capabilities into
