The most wonderful world is the world of fashion industry. Close your eyes and what do you see? Most of us would associate the fashion world with the glossy magazines, the celebrity stylists and ladies and gents walking on the ramp flaunting their wears and stuff. Some would also imagine parties with ladies and gents kissing around wearing simply divine dresses. Maybe this is what you think but when you come to know it more closely, you would realize it that there is a lot more to it than the imagination.
If we look at fashion industry at a broader perspective, we come to know that this industry can be split into three major parts. The first part is the stores. This part is mainly consisting of customer facing shops and showroom, where fashion is sold. The second part is the head office. This is the part where, all the fashion items are developed and this is where, a decision is made as to what to put in the stores at what point of time. The third part is the part consisting of suppliers. This is the part that deals with the industries and places where the products are developed.
The industries can further be classified to small, medium or big. The small fashion industry can be like boutiques and Haute Couture, while the medium fashion industry can be a dot com business or a family run firm. The big fashion industry is the multi-national companies and producing what we call the street brands.
After this jargon of classification, the high and the low ends meet. This word ‘end’ refers to the market and the target customer. The high end has a tendency to focus on the smaller and more specific markets. At this place you will find the biggest brands like Gucci, Prada, etc that are always focus to a specific class of people. There are also smaller independent boutiques that are limited to their functioning neighborhood.
The lower end is mainly consisting of your value retailers such as supermarket clothing brands. These are some of the biggest companies who are mainly concerned with provisioning of the fashion brands to the general public. Their focus is not the higher class, but the general middle class people. They are those who deliver the quality in bulk and are not limited to the geographical distances. For example, Nike and Monte Carlo are some brands falling in this category.
