A superioridade do modelo Zara

Em linha com o que escrevemos aqui há anos sobre a batota da proximidade, o poder da interacção, a co-criação, a rapidez e flexibilidade, este artigo, "The Zara Gap – And Retail Denial",  sobre a superioridade do modelo económico da Zara e a dificuldade de mentes presas ao passado mudarem, apesar dos números.

"The pressure to buy at lowest cost and to focus on Free On Board prices (ignoring costs of markdowns and lost sales) reflects outdated industry culture. Speed-to-market is a merchant and financial mindset, requiring cultural commitment in order to be competitive in U.S. and international retailing. The “Zara Gap” explains the magnitude of opportunity for those who are able to merchandise in shorter and shorter cycles.
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Hausman documents through financial analysis that supply flexibility (or postponement) in retail can achieve the following:

• Increase profits by as much as 28 percent

• Increase market capitalization by as much as 43 percent

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In an era of seismic technological change, the consumer and financial imperative is a rapidly transformed and collaborative supply chain. While many retailers excel at low cost sourcing and warehouse-to-store distribution, the unexploited management area to master is product speed, cost and flexibility across the enterprise supply network. How will industry culture transform itself? As Pogo instructs, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.”"

Recordar "A Stitch in Time (parte II)" e este texto.

Hoje, o que diria Ricardo?

Muitas vezes, demasiadas vezes, escrevo aqui no blogue que o tempo é o nosso recurso mais escasso, o tempo que dedicamos a uma frente de trabalho não pode ser investido numa outra frente de trabalho.
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Assim, ao longo dos anos, tenho chamado a atenção para o tempo que a indústria têxtil devia investir na criação do futuro e não desperdiçá-lo nos combates do passado, por exemplo em "Qual é o recurso mais escasso?"
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Assim, por cá, com os salários de cá, andam os governos a mexer nos custos da mão de obra, no tempo de trabalho, nos feriados, andam as associações patronais e de sector a defender o proteccionismo e esquecem  a grande vantagem competitiva da nossa indústria, a sua localização!!!
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E, quando alguém descobre que tem uma vantagem competitiva, o que deve fazer?
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B - A - T - O - T - A!!!!!!
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Agir de forma a abusar da sua vantagem competitiva!!!
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Por exemplo, inflacionando o número de épocas por ano!
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Assim, para quem escreveu em 2008 isto:

"sair duma crise estrutural e cair numa crise conjuntural."

Não deixa de ser triste, que seja um secretário de estado inglês a ver essa luz!

"Cable backs plan to boost textile industry"

Mal comecei a ler o artigo comecei a recordar o exemplo de Ricardo entre o têxtil inglês e o vinho português... e passei para a comparação actual entre o têxtil inglês e o têxtil português:

"Vince Cable will on Friday throw his weight behind an industry-led scheme (Moi ici: Interessante ser um "industry-led scheme" nesta Europa habituada à bengala do Estado por tudo e por nada) to resurrect the UK textile industry by creating up to 200,000 jobs in the next five years (Moi ici: Quantos poderão ser os criados em Portugal? Se houver "reappraisal" e espírito de aproveitamento das oportunidades, em vez de se ficar a lamber feridas e a defender um passado que não volta)

 O que se segue é tão "velhinho" já...

"for some “high fashion” clothes, such as relatively expensive jeans or shirts, it is now cheaper to base production in the UK than in China or other Asian production centres such as Bangladesh and India.
This is due to the high “hidden” costs of buying goods (Moi ici: Em linha com o nosso último postal) from suppliers in Asia at fixed prices, and then finding they can be sold only at large discounts because customers have moved on to the next trend."

E em termos de flexibilidade, rapidez, força de um cluster, como é que o sector se compara com o inglês?

"The disadvantages of buying from UK plants have decreased both because they have demonstrated they are quicker to respond to requirements for new designs, and also because labour and transport costs in Asia have gone up."

Os números do último parágrafo do artigo são interessantes pois quantificam o preço que os importadores pagam por terem uma cadeia de fornecimento muito rígida e alongada:

"For instance, for a UK- made tailored shirt, the gross profit drops from £55.86 to £53.20 when adjustments for discounting are made. The same product made in Asia sees a much bigger fall, from £60.58 to £45.58."

Que mais dizer... às vezes é desesperante não conseguir fazer passar a mensagem, falha minha certamente.

Lean retailing

No livro de Suzanne Berger encontrei a referência um livro escrito em 1999 "A Stitch in Time".
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Ontem li alguns capítulos e fiquei a matutar como tudo se encaixa para explicar o regresso dos clientes que testaram a Ásia e agora voltam a comprar à indústria portuguesa:
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"Merchandising is fundamental to retailing. Though perhaps less obvious, logistics is just as essential an ingredient for success. If you can't get the merchandise on the shelves, you can't sell it. And if you don't have the right merchandise on the shelves, you'll lose that sale to a competitor that does. What goes on behind the scenes is of great importance: efficient warehousing, transportation, and delivery systems are among the elements of successful merchandising.

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Lean retailers transform the basis of competition for all suppliers by radically reducing the amount of time manufacturers have to respond to orders. That means suppliers must be able to provide frequent deliveries, in smaller quantities, of more diverse products. Moreover, they must do so with a far greater level of accuracy in fulfilling orders and meeting delivery standards than in the past. In short, the retail revolution alters the basic rules of both domestic and global competition for the apparel and textile industries

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With the advent of lean retailing, replenishing products within a selling season is the most fundamental challenge for apparel manufacturers.

Instead of specifying that manufacturers respond to a single, fixed order placed far in advance of required delivery time, lean retailers may now require that a replenishment order be filled in as little as three days.

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For all retail categories, the percentage of total dollar volumes shipped on a daily or weekly basis quadrupled—from 8.7 percent in 1988 to 33.9 percent in 1992. At the same time, the percentage of nonreplenished goods plummeted, from 61.7 percent in 1988 down to 22.5 percent in 1992."

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Continua.

A Stitch in Time (parte II)

“For many commentators, a book about the future of the U.S. apparel and textile industries is still an oxymoron. The conventional wisdom paints a grim picture of where these industries are headed. Low-cost labor overseas and the increasing penetration of imports have certainly undercut American apparel manufacturers; apparel imports grew rapidly in most categories starting in the mid-1970s.
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As one consequence, the number of business failures among U.S. apparel manufacturers climbed from 227 in 1975 to a high of 567 in 1993.
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The conventional wisdom explains the industry's decline in this way: Apparel, particularly women's apparel, is driven by price-based competition among generally small manufacturing and contracting establishments. Labor costs represent a significant portion of cost for many garment categories, and U.S. wage levels far exceed those of competitors in countries like the People's Republic of China and Mexico.
Although the magnitude of these differences varies as exchange rates fluctuate, under any realistic exchange-rate scenario, the labor cost differential is sufficiently high to put U.S. manufacturers at a very significant competitive disadvantage.”
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Esta é a conversa ao nível do Forum TSF ou, como escreveu Ortega y Gasset, ideias apresentadas sem a capacidade de idear.
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O que poucos são capazes de perceber é a oportunidade:
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"Although the production of basic white dress shirts may lend itself to a price/cost analysis, this "staple" good, like many staple goods, now constitutes only a small proportion of all shirt production: by 1986, little more than 20 percent of men's dress shirts were white. This one-time staple has been replaced by shirts of dizzying diversity in fabric, design, and style, providing the final consumer with a huge assortment of shirts while exposing retailers and manufacturers to increased risk of holding large volumes of unsold goods. Classical economic assumptions about market competition are not directly applicable in this situation, even in a "mature" industry like apparel."
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Trechos retirados de  "A stitch in time : lean retailing and the transformation of manufacturing—lessons from the apparel and textile industries" de Frederick H. Abernathy, John T. Dunlop, Janice H. Hammond e David Weil.

Sonho de um optimista ingénuo (parte VII)

Há anos que procurava este livro "A stitch in time : lean retailing and the transformation of manufacturing—lessons from the apparel and textile industries" de Frederick H. Abernathy, John T. Dunlop, Janice H. Hammond e David Weil. A primeira referência que o citou, encontrei-a em "How we compete" de Suzanne Berger.
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Finalmente consegui adquiri-lo e as primeiras páginas fazem pressentir mais achas para a fogueira do meu optimismo ingénuo.
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Seguem-se alguns trechos do primeiro capítulo "The New Competitive Advantage in Apparel":
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"The most surprising aspect of this story is that today's U.S. apparel and textile industries —left for dead by business commentators and economic analysts in the 1980s—have begun to transform themselves,reaping new competitive advantages.
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The transformation of U.S. clothing and textile manufacturing is very much still in progress and has by no means been successful for every company; but these industries have entered a renaissance of sorts, one that reflects new information technologies and management practices as well as the new economics of international trade.
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We contend that this revolution in retailing practices will determine future competitive outcomes in retail-apparel-textile channels. These new practices—which we call lean retailing—have compelled apparel producers to reorganize the manner in which they relate to retail customers, undertake distribution, forecast and plan production, and manage their supplier relations. Lean retailing has also changed the way the textile industry relates to both apparel producers and retailers.
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When we began our research, we were advised by American industry participants to establish better performance measures—for example, how many minutes does it take to make a shirt? The traditional view holds that because manufacturing performance is determined by the labor time required to produce an item, then what applies to cars, for example, can also apply to clothing; therefore, U.S. apparel manufacturers might be able to save themselves by improving assembly operations.
Yet after years of studying hundreds of American apparel firms, we have found that direct labor content is not the primary issue. The companies that have adopted new information systems and management practices, participating in a well-integrated channel, are the ones with the strongest performance today—not those that have simply improved assembly operations."
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Continua