+ 44 20 8144 3706Introduction:
Fashion industry in UK is one of the effective growing industries of UK as it contributes to generate employment, increase in number of businesses and give contribution to the GDP. The fashion industry contributes to £32.3 billion to UK GDP and contributed about 890,000 jobs in 2018 (Evening standard, 2018). Clothing and accessories is always being a major contribution to UK fashion industry.
Thus, sustainability is one of the central challenges in the fashion industry as consumers of the fashion industry are educated and are developing their mindset towards having the ethical shopping. Being ethical is based on following the code of ethics, having eco friendly packaging and promotion of social responsibility (Pedersen et.al. 2018). Ethical and sustainability of fashion industry is the approach in which business generally adopt the approach of sourcing, designing and manufacturing clothes that would optimise the resources the industry and society on the large.
The basic objective of the report is to analyse the ethics and sustainability issues faced by M&S that is one of the leading fashion retailer in UK. Thus, the impact of such issues would be observed in the next 10 years. Also final measures would be given to overcome such issues.
Task:
Industry analysis examining the present structure of the Fast Fashion industry
Fashion industry in UK is one of leading industries that contribute to achieve highest revenues in the economy and leads to stronger contribution to GDP. UK industry currently have employed around 555,000 workforce in the sector of retail clothing, footwear, leather goods, etc provide fair growth in terms of fashion. In the current fashion industry, there are four basic leading companies that include Burberry, next plc, M&S and ASOS. These are the companies with top market capitalisation. Burberry is valued at 77% of the revenues that is $3.8 billion. Next plc comes on the second as is valued at 7.16 billion and major part of revenue comes from the international retail (UK fashion industry statistics, 2020).
M&S is one of the third largest company in which revenue is valued over 10.3 billion pounds that has annual sales of around 7 billion. The business faces a high competition from the two of this competitor and this lead to decline the amount of sales in the fashion industry. ASOS is on the 4th position that have annual sales around 1.8 billion and generally generate revenues from the retail aspects.
Conclusion:
From the overall report, it can be concludes that with growing amount of environmental challenges in the market, it is necessary for businesses for being ethical and sustainable. Thus, such factors are important for business because it would lead to optimise the resources and save for the future generations. The changing demands of the customers are being habitual towards growing trend of accepting the ethical brand and are mainly concerned about the society. Thus, ethically business would be responsible and accepting the right. Thus, sustainability in the fashion industry is being termed as being responsible for the society by managing the operations in effective manner. Thus, going green is about the business for being sustainable and achieving adequate profits. This would also lead to improve the sustained reputation in the business.
But M&S is having the clear CSR policies that are based on empowering equality, thinking about the community and taking concerns of the environment. Thus, M&S is on the way to overcome the issues regarding sustainability and utilising cost effective operations by adequate use of technology. Thus, industry has high opportunities of growing within the environment with the scope of being ethical and sustainable.
Reference
Books and Journals
Clark, G.L., Feiner, A. and Viehs, M., 2015. From the stockholder to the stakeholder: How sustainability can drive financial outperformance. Available at SSRN 2508281.
Fletcher, K. and Tham, M. eds., 2014. Routledge handbook of sustainability and fashion. Routledge.
Fletcher, K. and Williams, D., 2013. Fashion education in sustainability in practice. Research Journal of Textile and Apparel, 17(2), pp.81-88.
Garcia-Torres, S., Rey-Garcia, M. and Albareda-Vivo, L., 2017. Effective disclosure in the fast-fashion industry: from sustainability reporting to action. Sustainability, 9(12), p.2256.
Macchion, L., Da Giau, A., Caniato, F., Caridi, M., Danese, P., Rinaldi, R. and Vinelli, A., 2018. Strategic approaches to sustainability in fashion supply chain management. Production Planning & Control, 29(1), pp.9-28.
Pal, R., 2017. Sustainable design and business models in textile and fashion industry. In Sustainability in the Textile Industry (pp. 109-138). Springer, Singapore.
Pedersen, E.R.G., Gwozdz, W. and Hvass, K.K., 2018. Exploring the relationship between business model innovation, corporate sustainability, and organisational values within the fashion industry. Journal of Business Ethics, 149(2), pp.267-284.
Ritch, E.L., 2015. Consumers interpreting sustainability: moving beyond food to fashion. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.
Strähle, J. and Müller, V., 2017. Key aspects of sustainability in fashion retail. In Green fashion retail (pp. 7-26). Springer, Singapore.
Turker, D. and Altuntas, C., 2014. Sustainable supply chain management in the fast fashion industry: An analysis of corporate reports. European Management Journal, 32(5), pp.837-849.
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