Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 5, 2012

With the Winter holiday shopping season, fashion apparel retailer Zara has been the focus of media attention — the New York Times recently profiled the innovative fast fashion business model pioneered by Zara, while Elizabeth Cline's book on the costs of fast fashion has climbed up the sales charts.

Business Model 9

Business Model Innovation First-mover Advantage Apparel 9

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 17, 2016

In fact, 94% of the senior executives who responded to a recent global survey conducted by our firm, Strategy&, said that growth was a priority for their companies. A few companies, however, do succeed in growing year after year. In short, growth comes from the entire company, not from any particular product or service.

Company 8

Company Engineering Apparel Survey 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

For every Apple, there is an Atari, for every Fuji a Polaroid, and for every Zara an American Apparel. In today’s dynamic business environment, leaders of large established companies need more than ever to run and reinvent the business at the same time. Why does this happen to large companies with a legacy of success?

Company 8

Company Succession Maturity Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 4, 2017

How the best companies get up to speed. A D2C initiative can involve one platform or many, depending on things like image, objectives, target audience, and what’s feasible in a given market. The cosmetic company responded with a new product, and backed it up with a dedicated consumer marketing plan.

Retail 8

Retail Brand Apparel Discount 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 22, 2018

The automotive industry is being disrupted by electric vehicles and self-driving cars, just as home appliances is being disrupted by the Internet of Things and smart appliances, home entertainment by on-demand content providers, and apparel by online personal stylists such as Stitch Fix and Trunk Club. Data-Driven Marketing.

Automotive 8

Automotive Brand Technology White Paper 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2018

Many companies are aiming to be more transparent and authentic about their products, services, and costs. But when it comes to communicating authentically about the employee experience, companies still have a long way to go. Take outdoor apparel retailer Patagonia. Juj Winn/Getty Images. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Reputation 13

Reputation Brand Attrition How To 13

In the CEO Afterlife

MARCH 18, 2015

In today’s business, chronic complexity is stifling, stagnating, and bringing companies to their knees. This can mean expanding product lines, entering new markets and geographies, line extending brands, acquiring new businesses, creating projects, and adding layers of management to manage the self-created complexity.

Apparel 100

Apparel Brand Franchising Competitive Advantage 100

Great Leadership By Dan

MAY 12, 2016

Guest post from Michael Klassen : After three decades of working in marketing, I thought I had heard or read nearly every story of innovation and entrepreneurship out there. Today we fondly refer to these extraordinary American innovators as Haight-Ashbury hippies. Who were these people and how did they do it?

Apparel 120

Apparel Innovation Advertising Industry 120

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 8, 2015

The network effect, which describes how services and technologies become more valuable as more people use them, has driven the success of many internet companies. ” And one prominent brandtech company is Tesla, which has become one of the most valuable high-end car brands in recent years. ’s $59 billion).

Brand 8

Brand Apparel Software Content 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 16, 2015

But our work with a community of senior executives in the Bay Area suggests that today’s market leaders are following the advice of Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” ” Faced with hard choices, innovators find ways to transcend the tradeoffs. But these days every company has to go fast.

Chief Operating Officer 8

Chief Operating Officer Apparel Marketing Porter 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

If I asked you to picture the consumer luxury market, you might imagine jewels, sports cars, watches, premium drinks, high-end shoes and apparel, and so on. But according to a new report, 2016 Predictions for the Luxury Industry: Sustainability and Innovation , that sustainability gap is closing fast.

Brand 8

Brand Supply Chain Apparel Tourism 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2015

The last few weeks have brought news of turmoil in China, including currency devaluations, an economic slowdown, and a stock market plunge. My evidence is a series of separate surveys conducted by different organizations, including the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation. based companies and 33 non-U.S.-based While 33.6%

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Survey Price Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

Entrepreneurs and innovators are supposed to be happily self-directed. Although they're no longer wage slaves, they still feel captive to the fortunes and whims of big companies. Artisans' cooperatives help market products from diverse artists. Instead, the same sad story is popping up in many parts of the world.

Entrepreneur 17

Entrepreneur Cooper Apparel Bureaucracy 17

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 13, 2017

So you look at past projects, gather and analyze relevant market data, make predictions about how much revenue you’ll be able to generate, decide what resources you’ll need, and set milestones to reach your targets. McGrath recalls the painful experience of working with a big chemical company that wanted to diversify its business.

Planning 9

Planning Benchmarking Project Competitive Advantage 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 15, 2015

These purpose driven supers felt an extraordinarily deep level of emotion for the retailer brand at levels typically associated powerful lifestyle brands in apparel and luxury goods. There are in fact Super Geos — local markets with high concentrations of supers — of both types of supers that exist in pockets across the U.S.

Price 8

Price Brand Retail Apparel 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2013

Here, Try Some Nixon and Kimchi: How the Garment Industry Came to Bangladesh Planet Money I admit it: The reference to Nixon and kimchi in the headline got me to read it, but this piece on how Bangladesh came to be a world center for apparel manufacturing held my interest. Then, with the introduction of the iPhone, they didn''t.

CTO 8

CTO Apparel Ryan Proposal 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 2, 2013

Others gain new responsibilities in strategy, M&A integration, or innovation. In many companies, "digital" is a cacophony of disconnected, inconsistent, and sometimes incompatible activities. One company had three simultaneous mobile marketing initiatives, conducted by different groups, using different tools and vendors.

CIO 8

CIO Technology Apparel Information Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 27, 2017

In emerging markets, billions of people have moved out of extreme poverty. Meanwhile, business was free to focus on generating growth, productivity, innovation, and, ultimately, societal wealth. As a result, more companies are being valued based on their current earnings than on their growth potential.

Globalization 8

Globalization Supply Chain Human Capital Long-term 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

This week, Microsoft is announcing an unusual initiative that it hopes will change how the company operates: an internal fee on carbon. From my conversations with the company, I take away four major reasons they're doing this: Behavior change. Sales/Becoming the Vendor of Choice. buying RECs for electricity and offsets for travel).

Price 13

Price P&L White Paper Energy 13

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 28, 2014

Meanwhile, the world’s largest companies have begun to understand that their viability depends on a healthy world. The evaporation of the middle class, like the disappearance of fish stocks or forests, will be the end of many companies. As with other sustainability issues, the social and business consequences are inseparable.

Golden Parachute 13

Golden Parachute Apparel Trends Short-term 13

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 14, 2015

Reflecting this broader viewpoint, the company began to expand its market footprint, by, for instance, investing in a start-up that planned to sell furniture via the internet. When the brand does “good things,” such as introduce a highly innovative new product, a deposit is put into the brand bank account.

Brand 8

Brand Banking Apparel Strategy 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 23, 2015

Besides possibly saving humanity, the deal has another big upside — it signals to financial markets and businesses that the low carbon economy is worth investing in. Multi-trillion-dollar markets are in play and there will be many more winners than losers. Companies line up like never before for climate action.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Apparel Energy Price 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 28, 2014

Concerns that it wouldn’t have enough cash to finance its holiday stock has apparently led to the company to sell real estate, spin off its Lands’ End brand, and raise $625 million in unsecured loans and equity warrants. A trip through the HBR archives shows just how cutting-edge the company has been in so many ways for so long.

Retail 9

Retail Quinn Real Estate Apparel 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 20, 2016

I’m talking about the superconsumers who are inside your organization, working at every level: the fashionista who works in the mail room at the headquarters of an apparel company, or the finance manager who works for a pork brand and who eats three pounds of bacon in any given week.

Airlines 8

Airlines Energy Self-aware Learning Curve 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 3, 2015

But it’s less well known that efficiency is a problem for startups too, whose processes also become less flexible as they focus on efficiencies in their quest to move up market. Intriguingly, some start-ups are coming up with characteristically innovative ways to tackle the problem. The size of the apparel market only in the U.S.

Apparel 8

Apparel Strategy Insourcing Efficiency 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 20, 2011

Here's the rest of my top 10 stories, with callouts for companies and examples that typify the trend. These companies are notable victims of a new reality: resources are constrained and input prices are fundamentally rising. What can one say about the failure of solar company Solyndra ? Right now, the U.S. Nuclear on the outs.

Supply Chain 15

Supply Chain Apparel P&L Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2013

But as I’ve done for the last 4 years, I’ll attempt to summarize some of the latest stories about the big environmental and social pressures on business, and how some innovative companies are dealing with them. The clean tech markets keep growing fast: three of the world’s biggest economies — the U.S., Let’s dive in.

Supply Chain 11

Supply Chain McKinsey Apparel Energy 11

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 15, 2010

What drives some companies to succeed while others languish? Successful companies develop a system of a few truly unique capabilities that help them create differentiated value for their chosen customers. Focus for us, therefore, is not about picking just one market , but rather about choosing one coherent way of competing.

Succession 15

Succession Retail Merchandising Supply Chain 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 12, 2014

Any company building an online presence wouldn’t think twice about the need for sophisticated web analytics. Despite its success online, relatively few companies with physical venues employ advanced analytics solutions that track customer behaviors in their physical spaces. Marketing. This is changing fast, however. Operations.

Retail 9

Retail Customer Intimacy Apparel Wireless 9

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 20, 2014

This popular triumph of the “ heuristics and biases ” literature pioneered by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has made us aware of flaws that economics long glossed over, and led to interesting innovations in retirement planning and government policy. Defensive decision-making hurts the company and protects the decision maker.

Uncertainty 11

Uncertainty Kahneman Banking System 11

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 18, 2017

In the age before the digital revolution, marketers used to tell customers about a product and then work through a traditional step-by-step purchase funnel. With over 500 million dedicated fans, it also happens to be one of the most innovative franchises when it comes to fan engagement. ” Read More from Microsoft.

Sports 8

Sports Brand Content Industry 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 19, 2014

Both in response and pre-emptively, the world’s leading companies continued to aggressively pivot their businesses toward more sustainable and innovative ways of operating. But I also ran across a few specific company stories that were just really compelling or cool.

Chemicals 14

Chemicals Short-term Energy Report 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 30, 2014

It’s easy to scan headlines and see undisciplined for-profit companies (take GM, American Apparel). In the 2013 class of Echoing Green Fellows , five of the 12 nonprofits earn revenue, and five of the seven for-profit companies have received donations. million in start-up capital to 47 for-profit companies.

Entrepreneur 11

Entrepreneur Apparel Transportation Fashion 11

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 27, 2012

While GILT and its rivals sell across verticals (apparel, home, travel, kids, local), OKL deals in just one big one: home. Its latest funding round last year established a company valuation of $700 million. In GILT's wake, there followed a host of competitors (RueLaLa, Ideeli). But One Kings Lane (OKL) takes a different approach.

Retail 15

Retail Fashion Merchandising Apparel 15

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 20, 2016

Every year, I find big themes or specific company stories that I feel are impressive, important, or indicative of where the world is going. It’s not yet clear what Trump’s election means for issues that impact companies’ efforts to manage environmental and social issues. Then came 2016. Trump Shocked the World.

Energy 8

Energy Banking Chemicals Globalization 8