A Spanish clothing retailer, Zara, can bring new products to market in three or four weeks by holding materials in undyed form and regularly feeding information about market demand back to its suppliers. This allows it to react quickly to changing demand patterns. When it figures out which items are the most popular, it applies the right colour and pattern to the garment and ships them to stores. Retailers that source entirely from faraway low-cost countries have to issue firm orders long in advance due to the long shipping lead times, so Zara sources from locations closer to its stores.
No matter where you are in the value chain, you will be more powerful if you know how the end-customer really feels about the product. This principle is so important that it reverberates through the supply chain. The final link in the supply chain is the customer, so establishing a feedback loop completes the chain.
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- Continuous market feedbackย
- Concurrent product developmentย
- Rapid and early prototypingย
- Product life-cycle management (PLM)ย
- Early supplier involvementย
- Forward branding
- Designing for the supply chain
