Posted July 10, 2019

 

By Devin Steele (DSteele@eTextileCommunications.com)

 

MIAMI BEACH – Mike Todaro, managing director of the Americas Apparel Producers Network (AAPN), called the 38-year-old, ever-evolving group an “adhesive in this industry.”

 

That seems like a fair statement, judging from the number (about 215) and diversity of attendees at its recent pro:Americas Annual Conference here. Spanning the supply chain from yarn and thread makers to knitters to weavers to garment producers to dyers & finishers to logistics providers to equipment suppliers to software providers to retailers and brands – and everything in between – participants spent a day and a half deep-diving into an array of topics from top-notch speakers and connecting with various links in the chain.

 

Todaro opened the meeting by offering an assessment of where the AAPN is today and how it has transformed into a network that pulls all the right people into the same room to figure out ways to collaborate, learn and seize opportunities that develop better hemispheric strategies.

 

Tony Anzovino, chief sourcing & merchandising officer, Haggar Clothing Co., has publicly evangelized about raising the supply chain’s “AIQ (Apparel Intelligence Quotient)” since taking the reins of the AAPN presidency two years ago, an ideal that has become part of the AAPN’s mission. To that end, the network began to actively organize events aimed at sharing knowledge about what this industry is all about – and linking the links. The Carolinas Mill Tour and AAPN Regional Meetings were recently borne out of this ambition.

 

“I don’t mean to suggest to you that we’re the Department of Defense,” Todaro said in kicking off the conference. “But we are the ‘Department of Offense.’ We can take charge of educating these young people and giving them confidence and a way to see that there’s a future so that they have hope in our industry. And AAPN is facilitating that.”

 

A few minutes later, Anzovino called Todaro and Executive Director Sue Strickland to the dais to present them with the AAPN’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a development that appeared unbeknownst to the executive leaders. Todaro and Strickland have led the organization together for nearly a quarter century, and their vision, adaptability and the fact they surrounded themselves with a solid brain trust has enabled the AAPN to grow and evolve its way through the lean times and into a formidable, relevant, important association, Anzovino said. (Read related blog here.)

 

Awards

 

AAPN awarded the AAPN Industry Leadership Award to six individuals during the program, plus one at our Charlotte Regional Conference in April. This award recognizes those members who give back to the network. This year's recipients were:

 

• David Ha, owner, TexOps apparel factory, El Salvador;

• William Yidi, Finotex;

• Jeannamarie Cox, independent, industry veteran;

• Susan Ganz, CEO, Lion Brothers;

• Sandy Brink, Advanced Manufacturing Group;

• Tom Glaser, president, VF Supply Chain; and

• Devin Steele, eTextileCommunications.com.

 

Read more about the winners here.

 

Leadering vs. leadership

 

The Day 1 keynoter, Nancy Giordano – strategic futurist, corporate strategist, keynote speaker and TEDx Austin curator – offered insights into dealing with that change through audacious “leadering,” a case she spent about an hour building.

 

“How do we deal with that change?” she asked. “The first thing I suggest is taking a deep breath. It is a critical skill these days.”

 

She delved into the speed of change occurring around technology and the culture, all of which is leading to exponential shifts in thinking, interacting and living, she said.

 

“Every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day,” Giordano said about information and data exchange. “That equals 10 million Blu-Ray disks stacked the size of four Eiffel Towers.”

 

She summarized many of the new technologies and disrupters that didn’t exist even a dozen years ago, listing Uber, WhatsApp, Hulu, Pinterest, Twitter, Spotify, Tinder, Airbnb, Instagram, Snapchap and more – all made possible through the help of the smartphone.

 

“One in 10 Millennials would rather lose a finger than give up a smartphone,” she reported, citing a survey.

 

These disrupters are forcing people to demand more … for less, she said: “We want quality, innovation, transparency, personalization, speed, discovery and more, but we have less time, energy, money, complexity, loyalty and attention than before,” she added.

 

This has given rise to what she called “design thinking,” she said, or the ability to empathize, build, test, give feedback and iterate. “It’s a foundational way of thinking about innovation and change,” she said, adding that there is a growing appreciation for curiosity.

 

“What does it take to build our AQ, or your Adaptability Quotient?” she later asked. “Recognize an opportunity. This is a whole idea of building curiosity and a much more agile way of thinking.”

 

Giordano added that volatility should lead to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to collaboration and ambiguity to agility.

 

Through “leadering” as opposed to leadership, everyone has the opportunity to “play big” and have an impact on the world, she said. She explained “leadering” as “more dynamic, more humanistic. It really thinks through the systems of it. The future asks us to reconnect, trust and always wonder for new opportunities and threats.”

 

To “play big,” Giordano suggested we wonder (vs. resist), navigate (vs. replicate), contribute (vs. extract), connect (vs. being alone) and be audacious (over incremental).

 

She concluded: “We have the capacity to build things that have never been built before. So I encourage you to take a deep breath.”

 

Giordano was asked to give an encore presentation on a related topic the next day.

 

Pricing logic

 

Filling in for Jim Hardy, COO of Fanatics, who was unable to attend as planned, AAPN Executive Committee member Barbara Zeins, president & CEO of Gerson & Gerson, gave a presentation on “The Value of Time.” She opened her talk with the question, “If everyone knows that speed is important and faster is better, then why have supply chains gotten longer and not shorter?”

 

She offered a summary of the apparel industry’s history, which nicely set up the meat of her presentation, pricing logic from a highly analytical perspective and its impact on today’s supply chain and consumer demands. With the biggest single cost in a fashion product is the markdown, she went on to discuss the value of time in the apparel supply chain and how certain firms are reducing markdowns by dramatically improving inventory turns.

 

In short, she said, the 20th century was about making goods commons and the 21st century is about making goods uncommon as a result of customization, high quality, low cost, wide distribution, unlimited choices and Internet-enabled mechanization.

 

‘Disruptopia’

 

Taking the change topic to another level, another Executive Committee member, Kurt Cavano, founder of GT Nexus who retired in January, followed with his annual, eye-opening, example-filled overview of the seismic shifts occurring all around us. In his presentation, dubbed “Disruptopia,” he covered the ABCs (Amazon, Bitcoin and Chute, among others) of breakneck transformation and the effect technological and cultural changes are having on the world, particularly among Millennials.

 

“If you are not acting urgently, you are not going to be relevant,” he said.

 

The state of retail

 

The topic continued to dominate the day when Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at RSR Research, took the podium to cover, “The State of Retail 2019: Getting Comfortable with Change.” Among the forces driving change, she said, is the digitally connected consumer, but that doesn’t translate into a zero-sum transfer of sales. Omni-channel is omnipresent, yet demand generation and demand fulfillment are physically disconnected, she added.

 

Rosenblum called the retail store “the first and the last frontier,” noting that success will come from those that create a differentiated experience; leverage inventory to the max; optimize store layouts; and make employees (not robots) differentiating assets.

 

“The industry is facing two very big asks,” she said. “One, change the economics of the box – the composition of the P&L of the store; and two, overspend on technology to make up for past under-investment.”

 

She referred to omni-channel and the supply chain as the “current crucible,” noting that stores weren’t made to do the things they’re doing now. To make retail successful, supply chains are “still the next big thing,” she added.

 

Rosenblum also went over results of several retail studies, pointing out that retail winners, above all others, are measuring solid gains via a modern supply chain. Also, more winners express confidence in the viability of personalization and customization, she added.

 

“Personalization is like the weather,” she said. “Everybody talks about it but nobody wants to do a bloody thing about it.”

 

Menswear competition

 

Later, Anzovino and Roni Start, Apparel Industry Department chair at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandise (FIDM), provided a summary of the Haggar Clothing/FIDM SuperLab Menswear Design Competition in Los Angeles.

 

The competition began with eight graduates of the FIDM Menswear Program in August of 2018. Participants were tasked with developing plans for 15-piece collections that demonstrated a deep understanding of the millennial consumer market and the Haggar brand. Beyond the designs, Haggar also asked finalists to source materials and create the technical specifications and details that a factory would need to produce each garment.

 

Retailer of the future

 

Suzy Ganz, CEO of Lion Brothers, Inc., a Maryland-based designer and manufacturer of apparel brand identity systems, also discussed disruption and its impact on the industry, companies and people and what can be done to promote an ecosystem of wellbeing. She focused on global trends result from a hyper-connected world, geo-political complexity, demographics and economics.

 

The successful retailer of the future will have to be successful in two of the following quadrants in order to be successful, she said:

 

• Frictionless > low price = Amazon (70 percent of product searches now begin on Amazon, not Google);

• Low cost > frictionless = Walmart, which is becoming an e-commerce giant. “They know that in order to be relevant, low price is not always the top priority;”

• Brand > experiential = Nike; and

• Experential > low price = Warbly.

 

Custom shirt maker

 

Matt Hornbuckle, co-CEO of Stantt Shirt, discussed what led he and a partner to leave Proctor & Gamble and the custom men’s shirt company. They created a Kickstarter campaign that raised $120,000 and began working with a factory in New Jersey, he said. But after getting $2,000 shirt orders, they received a text message from the factory saying they were backing out of the project.

 

“So we scrounged around and found a supply chain,” he said.

 

The goal was to challenge the rules of traditional sizing – which, numbers-wise translates into only about 15 percent of men having the perfect fit – and build a new approach, with one in mind – making it simple to get a perfect fit.

 

Stantt shirts are crafted one time from data, he said. Thousands of body scans, millions of data points and the latest 3D modeling software went into its 99 unique sizes – and an algorithm that makes it easy for anyone to find their perfect fit using three simple measurements, he said.

 

Panel discussions

 

The jam-packed days also included two panel discussions. One took on the topic of nearshoring, with plenty of positive responses that it is real.

 

Moderated by Kim Macaulay, president of Kim Macaulay Associates, Inc., the panel consisted of:

 

• Lynsey Jones, vice president of Global Sourcing, Carter's;

• Linda Tiberi, managing director LATAM – Apparel Sourcing, Under Armour;

• Pam Peale, director of Sales, North America, DeSL;

• Maggie Martinez, vice president of Sales, Seaboard;

• Jill Coleman, business development director, Alvanon; and

• Rosenblum.

 

In addition, a “Genius Panel,” moderated by Rick Horwitch, vice president of Global Retail & Supply Chain Strategy, Bureau Veritas, featured three speakers who offered insights into their companies. They included:

 

• Jennifer Knight, president and COO, American Woolen Company;

• Keith Dartley, president, Swisstex Direct; and

• Chase Johnson, key account manager, Contempora Fabrics.

 

Following the session, Horwitch said: “We are not just the supply chain. What we are is actually the value chain. We don’t just employ production people. We employ people. We employ people who do all sorts of jobs – sales, technology, innovation. They are in a wide variety of things. We should think of ourselves as a value chain and extend ourselves beyond cut and sew, knitting, weaving, spinning, etc.”

 

Todaro concluded the meeting with a summary of the AAPN: “We are in no way, shape or four the Fortune 500. But in this industry, in this hemisphere, we are the Fortune 200 – that’s about how many organizations we have. And, collectively, we are in control of the industry of this hemisphere.”