Birnbaum: Design Revisited

December 1, 2009 - 08:37 — admin

Around 1990, we in the garment industry finally recognized that design was something more than what a designer did.  It is part of the manufacturing process. This realization forever changed the way we work.  We realized that as a process we could break design into a series of steps and move those steps from one person to another and even from one country to another.  We brought the overseas buying office and factory into the process.  Of as, this is the fashion industry, the first thing we did was change the name; thus design was transmogrified into product development.

 

Where design was once the purview of a small intimate group of three —designer, assistant, and merchandiser — it was now expanded into a series of departments — technical design, material sourcing, quality assurance, color development, just to name a few. Each was given its own area of responsibilities/authority and each changing the designer’s original design to meet their individual and separate needs.

 

It is now twenty years later and the designer has been relegated to the role of a subordinate player on the product development team.  Now the senior sourcing executives and operation COOs, under whom the product development teams work, all complain, “Designers all live in La-La Land.  They have no interest in designing commercially right clothing. They won’t travel.  They no longer have the technical knowledge to design. Designers just do their sketches and walk away.”  

 

Regrettably, there is a great deal of truth in these criticisms.  At the same time, we must accept that designers have been marginalized because we, the industry leaders have shunted them aside.  Go to any brand importer and attend a meeting where styles are planned for the coming season.  Look around.  In the front of the room are storyboards setting out the design concepts for the new season.  Also present are the designer, assistant designer, merchandiser; plus 27 other assorted advisors.  Who are all these people? Where did they come from?  Why are they in the room?  There was a time when the new season style-planning meeting was not even a meeting.  It was two people —designer and merchandiser — sitting at a table over a cup of coffee making some serious decisions (the assistant-designer was out of the room getting the Danish).  They knew their jobs depended on making the right choices. In those days the designer knew if the season flopped he or she would be fired and if two back-to-back seasons flopped the merchandiser was also out of a job.  However, they did have the responsibility and authority to do their jobs.

 

Today no one is responsible, no one has authority and some guy in the back of the room wants to tell everyone that this Fall “poison green” will be a color because his wife told him so and his wife is always right.  The original three have become thirty and no one can understand why product development costs have risen ten-fold[1].  To make matters worse, the entire process from first sketch to in-store delivery takes a year and the designs stink.

 

We understand the reason designs stink is because the process takes a year.  During that year everyone on the product development team has added their two cents to the style, changing everything except the color (which remained poison green) thus reaffirming that the wife of the guy in the back of the room was indeed right even though she was the only person in the entire city not at the meeting.  We know that in today’s world you cannot plan fashion a year advance.  We know that design is created by individuals and not by groups, and in that regard we can all recall the words of one of the 20th century’s greatest designers, “A camel is a horse designed by a committee[2].”

 

We know what we are doing is stupid and wrong, yet we cannot go back to the time when designers exercised greater control over the design process.  We cannot escape from our own trap, because in order to escape we must first overcome two challenges which seem insurmountable.

 

First, our own product development teams who were created to support the design process have now taken over. They have become formidable constituencies within companies; and as anyone who has ever tried to reform product development will tell you, this support team has become the greatest obstacle to change.  

 

There are a few companies, through enormous effort and perseverance, have regained control of the process.  However, those able to overcome the first challenge, face a second even more daunting challenge.

 

We lack educated professionals needed to carry out product development as it should be done.  We all recognize the product development team is not a team solution.  However, at the same time we recognize that our own designers lack certain skills.  Many of us look overseas to buying offices and factory suppliers for assistance. However, even the best suppliers still do not have professionals with sufficient competence to take over the task.

 

Any solution must start with education.

 

This brings us to the real questions:  Who? Where? What?

Who should be educated?
Where should that education take place?
What skills are we going to teach?


In meetings with senior executives at major brand-importer and retailers, we have discussed this problem at some length.  Everyone I have spoken to recognize the same existing problems and challenges. I have heard different concepts.

1.                   Designer labels’ importers, particularly European companies, are looking at strategies aimed at keeping the design process at home.  They see design as a core competency which, although in the past they have been willing to surrender to a limited degree to their traditional European suppliers, will not entrust to Asian factories and mills.  Their solution is the “home” solution

a.       Who:  The designer

b.      Where: At home (in Europe)

c.       What:  The technical design skills lost during the past 20 years.

There is a conversation among leading high-end designer labels to jointly build a new design school for their own employees.

2.                   Brand importers, particularly U.S. based companies are looking at strategies to relocate almost all product development overseas to supplier regions.  They look at the direct cost of in-house product development as unacceptable.  Their solution is the “away” solution

a.       Who:  In-country sourcing specialists

b.      Where:  Supplier regions

c.       What:  Skills to take designers’ concepts  and provide the right garment at the right price to the customer

Brand importers have already started opening product development in China, Vietnam and Thailand.

3.                   The supplier side, particularly major mills, factories, and supply chain managers such as Li & Fung.  They see product development as an extension of services they are currently offering customers.   They are beginning to understand that more and greater service is the way to reduce customer costs without reducing FOB.

a.       Who:  The factory

b.      Where:  In the supplier regions

c.       What :  Full range of services the designer requires, to allow the designer to provide the right garment at the right price to the merchandiser.


This is a new strategy.  It is based around a partnership between the designer and factory.  Set up a school where factory professionals can learn the skills necessary to provide assistance designers need, then bring the customers’ designers to the school for a short course to learn how to work with factory professionals. This solution offers some important advantages:
 

1. It returns the responsibility for design where it belongs to the merchandiser;
2. Since factories tend to be single product specialists dealing with a variety of customers, they can provide better services in their product, than the buying office or the customer who deals with a wide range of services;
3. The partnership between factory and designer will ensure greater design integrity, because the designer remains involved throughout the process and the quality assurance requirements are understood with the first sample
4. It is the best solution to achieve speed-to-market.

 

Everyone recognizes the problem.  Everyone sees that the present Standard Garment Sourcing Model (SGSM) makes no sense.  If the recent downturn has taught us anything it is this; We can no longer afford to wait 48 weeks for mediocre designs to arrive at the store, just in time to be pushed on the markdown rack.

 

The rest requires effort, perseverance, and sufficient courage to take on our own people.

[1] Hint:  3 X 10 = 30

[2] Sir Alexander Issigonis, automotive designer who created the original Mini Cooper