Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Fashion Industry
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Story by: Astha Satija
The world witnesses a dramatic increase of the COVID-19 cases, it has brought the entire world to a halt and fashion industry is no exception to it. This has forced fashion businesses to reconsider their measures and to re-establish the values they are selling and stabilize their sales.
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Global recession is already happening which obviously has impacted the gross disposable income of the people which affects their direct spending power on goods consumption. As far as we know from research the GDP is likely to be recovered either by the mid of 2021 or end of 2021. The leading markets of Europe and America are hit hard since the consumers consumption will decline relatively.
It is no surprise that fashion houses were already facing an issue of the huge overburden of the stock. Be it fast fashion houses, premium fashion houses or the luxury ones. Almost 85% of the unused stock ended up in the landfills from the fast fashion houses previously. Pandemic has created a horrifying image of the unused stocks. This season was obviously the show case of SS-20 collection in the market and the inventory from this collection will again create a wastage in the market. E-retailers like Net-a-porter and Far-fetch are likely to bare respectable losses when they continue to sell cheap stock at large volumes.
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Here comes the concept of discounting. Wile the premium, super premium brands can go for the heavy discounting keeping in the mind the losses they are going to bare; luxury brands will have to opt for a strategy to sell the iconic products at a respectful discount to preserve their brand values and image in the market. discounting and promotional offers will have to be infused with several other elements to make it worthy for consumers to buy because concepts which had just become mere terms like sustainability, materialism, over consumption will again be looked up on literally by consumers.
Not only fashion brands but other fields related to fashion will fall prey to the pandemic. Magazines for example are hit hard because they were already threatened by digital media and now even more, which makes it unlikely for them to sustain. The backbone of garment industry “the labourers” who work on day to day basis have no option but rather suffer the setbacks. And a lot more industries like freelance makeup artists, stylists etc.
The pandemic undoubtedly has brought the entire world at a halt be it any sort of industry. It is time to stop, rethink and re-evaluate ourselves and every step we take. fashion has slowed down, this industry will have to come and stand together to evolve it for it to be a better place.
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