1 Compare and contrast the approaches taken by H&M, Benetton and Zara to managing their supply chain. Garment retailing has changed. No longer is there a standard look that all retailers adhere to for a whole season.

Fashion is fast, complex and furious. Different trends overlap and fashion ideas that are not even on a store’s radar screen can become ‘must haves’ within six months.

Many retail businesses with their own brands such as H&M and Zara sell up-to-the-minute fashionability at low prices, in stores that are clearly focused on one particular market. In the world of fast fashion, catwalk designs speed their way into high street stores at prices anyone can afford. The quality of the garment means that it may last only one season, but fast fashion customers don’t want yesterday’s trends. As Newsweek puts it, ‘. . . being a ‘‘quicker picker-upper” is what made fashion retailers H&M and Zara successful. [They] thrive by practicing the new science of ‘‘fast fashion”; compressing product development cycles as much as six times.’ But the retail operations that customers see are only the end part of the supply chain that feeds them. And these have also changed.

At its simplest level, the fast fashion supply chain has four stages. First, the garments are designed, after which they are manufactured and then distributed to the retail outlets where they are displayed and sold in retail operations designed to reflect the businesses’ brand values. In this short case we examine two fast fashion operations, Hennes and Mauritz (known as H&M) and Zara, together with United Colors of Benetton (UCB), a similar chain but with a different market positioning.