Textile, apparel & footwear

We can help you develop a plan to take full advantage of the cost-saving opportunities available to you through industry benchmarking, inventory and production controls, gross profit reconciliation, succession planning and assistance with managing chargebacks. We also help companies obtain financing by leveraging our relationship with the financial community. 

A rich and varied sector of activity

The apparel & footwear subsector includes:  

• Protective apparel: increased safety standards in the manufacturing, chemical, oil and gas, and construction sectors is expected to pull up demand for protective apparel. 
• Fashion apparel: this subsector includes fashion style such as streetwear, sportwear, formal and office wear, haute couture, retro, vacation wear, boho & prairie chic, ethnic, cowgirl, military, goth, rocker/biker chic, androgynous. There are also the fast fashion and slow fashion sub subsectors.
  > Companies in the fast fashion industry democratize luxury trends by replicating runway trends and high-fashion designs, and mass producing them within days instead of months at low cost.
  > Slow fashion apparel companies on the contrary focus on producing clothes with trendless designs, sustainably sourced premium fabrics, and environment-friendly production process.
  
  The U.S. fashion apparel market size is projected to reach about $400 billion by 2025. 
• Children-wear industry: the children-wear apparel subsector is highly fragmented, and its global market size is projected to reach $82 billion by 2027. There is an increasing demand for children eco-friendly clothing choices. 
• Sports footwear: they are designed for physical activities such as cycling, running, hiking, golfing, playing soccer, tennis, or football. The global sports footwear market size is projected to reach about $78 billion by 2027 thanks to the introduction of eco-friendly shoes, and greater popularity of physical activities. 
• Handbags: they may be made with leather or fabric such as cotton, wool, silk, polyamide, polyester and are used to enrich one’s looks and to store personal belongings. The handbag market is expanding: the global handbag market size was about $47 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $78 billion in 2028. This growth is due to their stylish appeal, the quality of the materials, the elegant designs that entice more and more consumers. 

A controversial industry

However, the textile, apparel & footwear industry, especially the fast fashion sub sector, is subject to several criticisms: 

• The industry emits an estimated 2 to 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas; that’s more than the international flights and maritime shipping’s combined greenhouse gas emission. Polyester garments production is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emission: 60% of garments are composed of polyester fibers, and polyester fibers production releases two to three times more greenhouse gas than cotton fibers production 
• The industry is the second largest consumer of water in the world with about 215 trillion liters of water consumed per year. Cotton made garments consume more water than synthetic textile clothing items. To produce a pair of jeans, for example, 2,000 gallons of water is needed. That’s the equivalent of the quantity of water that one person can drink for 10 years at the rate of 8 cups per day. The industry also dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams. 
• Textiles account for about 9% of annual microplastic losses to the oceans: washing synthetic textile clothing items such as polyester garments releases the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles in the form of bits of plastic into the world’s oceans per year. Those polyester fibers never biodegrade and are estimated to compose up to one third of plastic pollution in the ocean.

SOME OF THE KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

The apparel & footwear industry is a competitive market. In a mature industry with a sheer size, your organization needs to be agile. Some of the key success factors that we see include innovation, collaboration, personalization, digitization, and sustainability:  

• Social issues such as improvements in your organization’s labor standards, working conditions, workers’ compensation, and diversity and inclusion, especially if you operate in the fashion industry 
• Societal issues such as social equity, racial equality, and health 
• Environmental issues such as the reduction of your organization’s waste stream, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, regenerative agriculture 
• Producing and distributing products and offering services that are authentic, transparent, traceable, and ethical by leveraging new capabilities in biomaterials, additive manufacturing, digital fabrication, and artificial intelligence.
• Enhancing customer experience.
• Building a network of preferred suppliers to educate each other, and work with them in forecasting, planning, capacity management practices, and creating an integrated approach to supply-chain optimization.
• Prioritizing renewable energy purchases, reducing supply chain carbon footprint, improving material selection, and distributing garments, accessories and footwear manufactured on the principles of eliminating waste and pollution and regenerating natural resources. 
• Encouraging initiatives to develop used clothes business for reuse or recycling when they are no longer needed including partnering with clothing rental businesses, designing clothing items in a way that would make re-use and recycling easier (circular fashion), convincing consumers to buy fewer clothes and of better quality for lasting use (slow fashion), and generally steering consumer behavior towards choosing more sustainable options.