Fashion Industry

Keeping up with fashion means keeping up with current events. The truth is that the fashion world reflects the real world. What’s more, the fashion world moves as quickly as the real world. This is a reality that can be challenging for today’s fashion designers, buyers, marketers, merchandisers, and retailers to keep up with.

Do you work in the fashion industry? You already know that a big chunk of your career involves simply keeping up with trends. You may be wondering how you can realistically create and distribute fashion looks quickly enough to stay relevant and make sales. It may feel like competitors have some type of crystal ball that allows them to spot and recreate fashion trends faster than the speed of light.

There are actually three things you can start doing today using just your phone or keyboard that will give you an edge. Take a look at the three best hacks for using technology to keep up with global fashion trends.

Put Google Alerts to Work

It can be tough to try to keep up with headlines. The good news is that Google Alerts can do the hard research for you. You can set up real-time alerts for fashion-related topics in a few minutes.

Google will actually send you notifications whenever any of the words you’ve selected show up on the Internet. The nice part about using alerts is that you can completely customize your alerts to create notifications for very specific words that mean a lot in your corner of the fashion world. You can essentially put together a curated slice of the Internet that serves as your own headline machine.

Alerts can be focused on specific fashion items, celebrity names, influencer names, designers and more. Alerts can be especially helpful following big award shows, red-carpet events and media events where trends are sure to be ignited. The reality is that a red-carpet moment can influence an entire fashion season.

Alerts aren’t just good for spotting trends. Alerts can also be set up to help you stay ahead of new laws and regulations regarding production and sales. Knowing about compliance requirements is essential for avoiding financial, legal and reputation-related consequences.

Get to Know Newsletters

Newsletters and trade publications for the fashion industry are overflowing with important information regarding the trends and people making waves. You really need to start subscribing to newsletters and trade publications if you aren’t already. What are some of the best newsletters for fashion right now? Here’s a quick roundup of fashion newsletters and trade publications that are on the cutting edge of what’s hot and current:

  • REDEF
  • The Business of Fashion
  • Manhattan Fashion Magazine
  • Lauren in the Afternoon
  • You Look Fab
  • He Spoke Style
  • Goop
  • Apparel Magazine

Don’t forget that most fashion brands actually offer their own newsletters. It’s a good idea to gather a collection of newsletters from brands that range from high-end labels to fast-fashion discount stores. You will get a nice picture of what’s happening in global fashion when you have variety at your fingertips. Newsletters are great because they give you daily or weekly roundups of the big fashion moments that are happening without any hunting required!

Make Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software Do Some of the Work

Knowing what’s hot right now doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to keep up with trends. Knowing about trends is actually only half the battle. You need to be able to get new ideas to market using the latest technology if you want to keep up.

More and more brands and designers are relying on something called product lifecycle management (PLM) software to reduce time to market (TTM) and cut costs. Something like fashion PLM software from Centric Software offers an easy way to streamline practices, churn out finished products more quickly and get hot items to market in a flash. This type of fashion PLM software keeps everyone on the same page when it comes to every aspect of design, development, merchandising, sourcing, manufacturing, and retail.

Don’t Let Global Trends Get Ahead of Your Brand

Having the right systems in place can give your brand the edge when it comes to keeping up with trends. Of course, knowing is only half the battle. It’s so important to have the right software and systems in place to make sure your forward-thinking ideas can become tangible. Start getting the right tools in your hands to see why success is always in fashion!