Word counts: 1273
11th March 2013
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction……………………………………3
2.0 Overview and Demographics
2.1 ASOS …………………………………………4
2.2 Topshop ……………………………………4
3.0 Supply Chain
3.1 Supply Chain of ASOS ……………….. 5
3.2 Supply Chain of Topshop ………….. 7
4.0 Conclusion ………………………………………9
5.0 Bibliography …………………………………..10
1.0 Introduction
‘Fashion industry is characterised by short product life cycles, volatile and unpredictable demand, tremendous product variety, long and inflexible supply processes and a complex supply chain.’
(Sen, 2007, pp. 1)
Due to the nature of the fashion industry, the demand in supply chain changes rapidly. Time is a crucial factor for fashion and therefore supply chain management should be sensitive according to the change in demand (Sull et al., 2008). This report is going to compare two supply chains in the fashion industry – ASOS and Topshop. The aim is to evaluate different logistic systems across brands and address related issues.
2.0 Overview and Demographics
2.1 ASOS
The fashion industry has been known as the third largest online market with sales of £1.7 billion in 2006 (Meadows, 2007). ASOS launched its market position in June 2000 and became one of the biggest and fastest growing online fashion retailers in UK (Bland, 2011). Its scale is enormous for an online-based company which owned more than 400 brands and covers 167 countries (ASOS, 2013). It is approximated that over 1300 new product lines are introduced by ASOS every week, which show the importance of supply chain management (Meadows, 2007) Moreover, with an increase in profit by 137% in 2007, it obviously showed that ASOS owned a sound stock managing system.
ASOS
Topshop
Launching Year
2000
1964
Price
Low to High
Bibliography: Ilfeld, J. S. & Winer, R. S. (2002). Generating Website Traffic. Journal of Advertising Research, 42 (5), 59-61. Meadows, D. (2007) ASOS sets the Fashion in Logistics. Supply Chain Standard. Assessed online: http://www.supplychainstandard.com/liChannelID/13/Articles/1143/Asos+sets+the+fashion+in+logistics.html [Last visit: 10/03/2013] Card, J. (2008). Nick Robertson 's business success with ASOS. Growing Business. Assessed online: http://www.growingbusiness.co.uk/asos.html [Last visit: 09/03/2013] Fernie, J ASOS (2013) www.asos.com [Last visit: 09/03/2013] Topshop (2013) www.topshop.com [Last visit: 09/03/2013]