The good is made to wait, and the sustainable too. A new production model has caught the attention of many brands with the aim of putting an end to overproduction and betting on 0 stock. A more predictable, more efficient and less urgent fashion promises to end warehouses full of forgotten clothes that no one will ever wear.
Before mass production was established in the textile industry due to ready-to-wear, fashion was already on demand, people used to order their clothes and dresses, either from the dressmaker or from haute couture houses. The phenomenon on demand or also called pre-sale is based on altering the conventional order of the sales and production process.
It works on a custom basis, first the product is designed and once approved it is launched on the market without having produced it, leaving the customer to buy it so that the company later knows how many garments it should produce.
In Spain, brands such as Tropicfeel, Laagam, Alohas and Miriam Ponsa have been pioneers in implementing the pre-order model in their collections or in their product launches. Each of them has established it in their own way, but they agree that it is a model that mainly benefits the environment, the customer and also the company.
Alberto Espinós, founder of Tropicfeel, learned about production on demand because the brand started on Kickstarter, a financing platform for creative projects, a leader in the world of wordcloud funding, in which investors receive product in exchange for the initial investment in the project. This business model is a form of production on demand.
“Consumers are increasingly willing to buy without immediacy and to wait a period of time to receive their order. Producing on demand means making the product profitable at the same time that it is launched on the market, so that the client participates in that initial investment that is needed for its manufacture”, says Espinós.
Currently, Tropic Feel’s production is 30% on demand and 70% immediate sale, since they use this production model in new product launches. According to Espinós, one of the advantages of pre-sale is that thousands or tens of thousands of people spend months waiting, dreaming and generating expectations about a product they have purchased, “If you meet the expectations of the product, the entire community will feel super satisfied and they will talk, they will have access to the product before anyone else and they will get it at a better price, for helping in advance”.
Laagam, founded in 2017, also launched its first product on Kickstarter, and pre-sales has been part of its business to a greater or lesser extent ever since. Inés Arroyo, founder and creative director of the brand, assures that what made us implement 100% production on demand was the ambition to end overproduction, “We are always working to be as sustainable as possible as we are a Fashion brand”.
Laagam started selling wholesale a year ago, and that has opened a new window for them, since having to manufacture stock for multi-brand stores they always manufacture about 50 more pieces so that the customer also has the option of immediate sale. . “It should be noted that the immediate sale option has meaning behind it for us,” says Inés.
Choosing to produce on demand allows Laagam to launch new products every week, a fact that generates more variety for the consumer and the same environmental impact. “It allows us to take out 7 or 8 garments each week, and although it seems like a lot, we really produce very little stock.”
At Alohas, on-demand production was a necessity, according to Alejandro Porras, founder and CEO of the brand, “With the structure we had at the beginning, we could not meet the demand we had, there were always stock outs”, as a solution , they put the models that they ran out in pre-order. In 2019 they decided to turn the business model around and join the trend of releasing new products on demand every 20 days.
Like the other brands, Alohas extends a discount to those who buy on demand, a fact that helps to have a forecast that makes the company more efficient, without overproducing and generating help with cash flow. “Our first challenge is to produce what people want,” says Alejandro. Alohas currently maintains immediate sales on the products that have worked best in pre-sale, thinking of that customer who does not buy so far in advance
Almost three years ago production on demand changed Miriam Ponsa’s business model. As a result of the pandemic, the brand had to make the decision whether or not to maintain its physical store in Barcelona. That decision, accompanied by the experience of a whole year selling masks online, made the brand rethink its way of producing and the impact it had on the environment.
They left behind their premises on Calle de la Princesa to open the doors to their online store and on-demand production. To this day, at Miriam Ponsa they release four collections a year that are on sale for a week, in addition, the launch of this summer season 2023 was accompanied by a fashion show that took place the week before the sale, in which customers can buy product and receive it after 6 weeks.
