It’s no secret that fashion retailers and brands are in a tremendously challenging environment. Faced with consumer demand for fast fashion at competitive prices and a proliferation of choice, retailers today are facing strong pressure on growth while struggling with high inventories and slow sales. Simultaneously, rising apparel sourcing and production costs are heavily impacting margins.<\/p>\n
The 2017 Global Sourcing Reference report<\/strong> from Kurt Salmon, part of Accenture Strategy, highlights that retailers which shift production to alternate locations with cheaper labor costs are chasing a temporary fix to a bigger problem, as costs rise in sourcing regions globally. Instead, retailers must move away from a sourcing cost obsession and focus on reinventing their operating model to unlock trapped value in their supply chains. Technology innovation — across analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3-D printing and other areas — will be the key enabler on this path forward, fostering better collaboration and visibility across the value chain while greatly improving product innovation, time to market, reliability, execution and quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2017 Global Sourcing Reference report from Kurt Salmon, part of Accenture Strategy, highlights that retailers which shift production to alternate locations with cheaper labor costs are chasing a temporary fix to a bigger problem, as costs rise in sourcing regions globally. Instead, retailers must move away from a sourcing cost obsession and focus on reinventing their operating model to unlock trapped value in their supply chains. Technology innovation \u2014 across analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3-D printing and other areas \u2014 will be the key enabler on this path forward, fostering better collaboration and visibility across the value chain while greatly improving product innovation, time to market, reliability, execution and quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-53747","resource","type-resource","status-publish","hentry","category-supply-chain","tag-2017-global-sourcing-reference-report","tag-accentures-global-sourcing-reference-report","tag-product-sourcing","tag-retail-supply-chain","tag-retail-technology-innovation","tag-supply-chain","tag-technology-innovation","tag-technology-innovation-in-the-retail-supply-chain","editorial_type-special-reports","company-accenture","sponsor-accenture"],"yoast_head":"\n