Introduction
We have a bold vision for the apparel manufacturing industry in 10 years. In 2032, what new things will appear in the future? What exactly will have changed? Read this article; you will find that the following five trends will likely emerge in the apparel industry.
Robots Labor
For decades, global leading fashion brands keep importing clothing from countries like China, Vietnam. The major reason is workers costs are lower in those countries. However, another shift is underway, the robots are coming for garment workers.
Why might this be a trend? There are three main reasons. One is that fashion trends have been frequently updated, and clothing brands worldwide have to keep up with the trends to avoid being forgotten and eliminated.
The second is that human efficiency is no match for robots or machines. In the long run, clothing manufacturers believe that the automation of the mass production of robots is a more cost-effective and economical choice. What’s more, machines do not need to rest.
Third, the world’s technology is updated very quickly, and nowadays, some of the workstations have been replaced by robotic operations in the top garment factories such as sewbots. Although the whole set of automation systems is not mature enough, I believe that in the next 10 years, there will be an explosion of technology beyond our expectations.
Better Working Conditions
“Today we are in the middle of the Information Revolution, facing fundamental changes to the way we live and work.” The quote is from Peter Thomson. I believe workers in the fashion industry will get better working conditions in the next 10 years.
Over the decades, many studies have shown that garment workers work under poor conditions such as poor air quality and ventilation, dark lighting, high temperature, and bad toilet sanitation. Nowadays, there is increasing awareness about garment workers from consumers. They have been putting great pressure on fashion brands and retailers to offer concerns about poor working conditions. And international environment agencies have launched sustainable standards for the fashion industry.
Digital Factories
In the next 10 years, many traditional clothing manufacturing companies will become digital factories, especially some leading manufacturing companies. They will get their production process and supply chains more digital. All big data, real-time data can be analytics. And more auto management systems will allow these companies to gain significant efficiency.
3D Clothing Products
With the development of global 3D printing technology and the application of 3D printing materials in shoes and hats gradually maturing, 3D printing sports shoes have become more popular in recent years. 3D printing materials manufacturing shoes and hats, with a one-piece molding, personalized, lightweight, small batch production, and other advantages. But for clothing, the 3D printing process prints objects by depositing layers of melted plastic on top of the next layer, and these layers are fused in a completely different way than fibers are turned into fabric. Until the material problem is solved, 3D printed clothing is still considered an art project, not an entire industry. Ten years later, it will be as mature as shoes.
Clothes Manufacturing CRM
CRM for clothing manufacturing companies is the key to the current digitalization and informatization. Customer management software helps the manufacturing industry to open up the enterprise demand chain, connect the enterprise, customers, equipment, and partners, gain insight into the potential needs of customers, provide more value-added services to customers, and create a new situation of profit growth formanufacturers while improving customer satisfaction.
To Follow The Trends, What Should Fashion Industry Do?
- Penetrate the concept of sustainable development into all aspects of industrial R&D and design, production and circulation, consumption care, recycling, etc., and promote the green management of the whole life cycle of products.
- Promote flexible production, green consumption, and other modes to achieve extensive coordination and efficient use of resources, and promote synergy between economic and social development and ecological protection.
- Actively connect to the carbon trading market and fully use green financial tools to support the green transformation of industries; digital technology reconstructs the industrial chain to become a core source of competitive advantage.
- Enriching operable and calculable carbon emission reduction management and analysis tools with digital technology.
- Establishing a sustainable fashion traceability system to promote the transparency and greening of the supply chain.