Leveling the Playing Field in Fashion

By Aadi Vaidya, Chief Operating Officer, Zilingo

Aadi Vaidya, Chief Operating Officer, Zilingo

How Zilingo is Harnessing Technology to Build a Fair, Transparent and Connected Fashion Value Chain

The world of fashion is abuzz with booming trends such as e-commerce and omni-channel retail. All eyes are on major players to make the next big move in consumer fashion, but how many are looking upstream?

The global fashion supply chain is a multi-trillion-dollar industry that remains largely unaggregated and underserved by tech. It is a network ridden with dated processes, resulting in inefficiency, poor connectivity, and minimal transparency. Issues are pervasive at all levels of the value chain—from the smallest garment factory which lacks digital capabilities to some of the largest fashion brands which have low to no real-time visibility over an order.

As the industry continues to grow and evolve, two things are for certain: one, that there are huge upstream opportunities in fashion, and two, that the ultimate solution lies in leveraging technology.

Technological solutions to age-old issues

The fashion value chain is a prime example of an industry bogged down by legacy infrastructure and processes. For an industry as large as it is, this presents massive opportunities for technology players to step in and plug the gaps.

A good example of this is technology’s ability to improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes. Take the example of quality control, a critical part of the manufacturing shop floor, but highly manual, leading to reduced efficiencies and high defect rates. By digitizing this process, production managers get real-time insights into defects, enabling immediate rectification, reduction in wastage, and improvement in margins for the factory. With all this data in the cloud and accessible in real-time, brands anywhere in the world get unprecedented access into their production process, and the shop floor is no longer a black-box. This makes the supply chain fast, and enables both factories and brands to earn higher margins and reduce wastage.

Another outstanding benefit of digitizing the supply chain is the ability to aggregate and leverage data to add value to other business needs. Take financing, for instance. According to BAML and McKinsey, 70 percent of the entire apparel industry is unrated. A key reason for that is not because it is non-investment grade but because traditional financial institutions cannot assess the industry owing to how unaggregated it is. The data points that Zilingo aggregates across digital platforms and stakeholders in the value chain allow us to develop expertise and evaluate risk better and in a more comprehensive manner.

Changing the game

The application of technology in the world of fashion is limitless. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) will continue to grow as the fashion supply chain works to maintain and retain margins while labor costs increase. Artificial intelligence and data analytics will allow organizations to make insight-driven decisions to aggregate demand, optimize production performance, forecast trends, and enable diversified sourcing with thousands of suppliers and manufacturers around the world.

Visualization technologies will allow the same organizations to make those decisions on the fly and tackle issues in real-time. Ultimately, technology players that can create services that consolidate these technologies and value-add to their customers will emerge at the forefront of a new frontier in the business of fashion.

Zilingo is one of the players here trying to change the game. We believe the future of fashion belongs to everyone—from big brands to smaller manufacturers. The key to achieving that vision lies in leveraging the right technologies. We are lowering barriers-to-entry with a technology platform that vertically integrates different parts of the fashion supply chain to unlock margins opportunities for all stakeholders.

We’re reimagining the fashion industry to make it fair, connected, and transparent for all.