Nearly 70% of surveyed fashion executives, investors and industry observers believe that conditions for the fashion industry have become worse, according to a report in December by consultancy McKinsey and London-based publication Business of Fashion. The McKinsey and Business of Fashion report forecasts annual online sales of luxury fashion will increase fourfold to 12% of total sales in 2020 from an anemic 3% in 2010. Other companies have started offering software and logistics services to high-end fashion brands that have more experience in clothing design than in creating lightning-speed supply chains. “Luxury brands have come around to [digital] over the past few years,” says Stephanie Phair, chief strategy officer at Farfetch. The minute that digital technologies become too emphasized, it either dilutes the luxury experience or it unveils the fact that what we thought was luxury was really not, she says.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 16, 2017 03:04 UTC