Dark fashion for the clothing industry

Sur l’écran cru de la vidéoconférence, Sandrine Devillard laisse tomber ses prédictions sans fracas, mais sans pincettes non plus.

In general, in North America and Europe, the clothing sector has not been doing well for a while, explains the associate director seniore at McKinsey in Montreal.He was only gaining strength before the virus strikes.

Of course, some companies hit the headlines in 2020, despite everything, and generate profits.Especially the strongest online trade.But together, they represent only 20 % of the sector.

The rest ?

The other 80 %?

He draws all statistics from the profits downwards.

McKinsey calls these companies "value destructive".

According to a report entitled The State of Fashion 2021, published by the Consultants firm and The Business of Fashion magazine, the profits from the whole industry will decrease by 93 % in 2020 because of these actors in difficulty, thenthat they had increased by 4 % in 2019.

So, from a general point of view, the year 2020 was catastrophic in the garment.And bankruptcies, closings and other recourse to the law protecting against the creditors that we observed while the pandemic refused to lose his breath are only the beginning of a tumble that will last.

In addition, according to McKinsey research with consumers, Canadians are not in spending mode on the clothing side.No outings, no restaurants, no holidays with friends or family, teleworking ... The ball gown and the Complet-Cravate are in break.

The loudly word is barely starting to describe the inventory.

But the portrait drawn by the analyst is not entirely dark.

Clothing, unlike electronics in particular, is not controlled by web giants or even by giants in short.Head three, Amazon, Target and Walmart occupy barely 20 % of the market, even if there was 6 % growth during the start of 2020.

There is therefore room for other companies.Smaller, agile, those who will be able to use digital to compete with adults and will be ready to go for the future, first head, in order to meet the many challenges that mark this sector in transition.

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"It's not an easy period.But there are positive things, "notes Debbie Zakaib, director of MMODE, the organization that unites the many voices of the various actors in the field of clothing in Quebec.

The pandemic has created an impetus of solidarity within the industry, she says, to ask for help, support together.It has also accelerated the digitization of the sale, the organization of delivery structures.Companies have been forced to advance the development of their online trade in accelerating.Many things have been jostled.And it was not necessarily bad.

But if the crisis has aroused a certain economic nationalism and especially the realization within the population as a certain self -sufficiency was important as much in food as in clothing - for the health sector in particular -, the battle of thelocal purchase and for the health of this sector is not won in advance.However, 83,000 people are used, more than in aeronautics.

According to McKinsey's predictions, the garment will have to wait until the first quarter of 2025 to return to normal in Quebec.

The path will be long and arduous.

Charles de Brabant, director of the Bensadoun School of Retail Trade Management of McGill University, is one of the optimists."I'm so much more confident now than 30 years ago," he said.

The professor is convinced that there are human and technical resources in Quebec to find solutions.

Currently, and even before the pandemic, he observed a cleavage of the sector between companies specialized in "experiential", on the one hand, therefore the strong brands which bring an intangible added value to the products, a reality often associated with shopping in shoppingboutique, and on the other hand, companies that could be described as effective, often online.Those whose strength is to provide practical, concrete solutions, quickly.A gray t-shirt delivered during the day.Snow boots too.These companies have often managed well during the pandemic given their naturally distant specialization.

Some brands have also performed well due to the very nature of their products."Lululemon was doing well," notes the professor about the Canadian company specializing in very comfortable clothing.And we can easily imagine that the slippers will have had a better year than the pumps.

For companies whose business model rests a lot on the narrative force of the brand, the challenge, currently, is to keep the experience of this identity alive, emotions created in a context of pandemic, confinement and distancing.

Some people try the experience.The Danish brand Ganni makes its overseas deliveries in the same bags-sealed-that if we went to the store, while offering very precise software for assessing sizes on its online purchase site.We are trying to approach the boutique experience.

"The future is the merger of the efficiency of online purchase with the brand experience," believes Jacques Nantel, former hec professor specialist in retail and a member of many boards of directors.

And this is where Quebec medium -sized companies must watch.

Because between the small nestled local brands, which were spoiled by the wave of accelerated nationalist consumption during the pandemic, and the wholesale of the web which also took advantage of the new passion for online shopping, there are the average actorswho suffer and must rethink.

Those who have too much square feet to pay in shopping centers, in particular, and who are now forced to restructure even if their online sales have increased and that they put double bites to develop this niche.We think of Garage-Dynamite, Aldo, Reitmans and Company.

The other crucial angle to prepare for the future - except to try to conquer the Asian market, a big piece!-, that's all that affects the values of millennials: sustainable, ecological, recycled, humanitarian ...

It is clear that companies that want to meet the 2021 challenges must think about it, believes Sandrine Devillard, from McKinsey.

Diet

Marie-Eve Faust, director of the Uqam Higher School of Fashion, thinks that Quebec should be doing with clothing the same exercise he did with his diet: try to understand where ourclothes come, which manufactures them, their environmental and human impacts, and how to encourage companies today can help in the social, ecological and economic development of Quebec.

In food, the trend had already been heavy for several years, but it has accelerated during the pandemic: consumers are asking Quebec products.Wisses and producers found it.The sometimes higher prices of local products no longer put off customers as well as before, and they want to know who pushed, who has raised, who cooked, who caught their food.

However, there is know-how for design and production in Quebec and there is a way to find the fibers here.Whether hemp, the future, Asclepia or Quebec wool.

"I want to set up a team of people to think about it," she said.

And see if it will be possible, maybe in 2021, to make a clothing really 100 % Quebec.

And start thus, but also with other paths, to really look for new local, ecological, economically, culturally and socially sustainable, and therefore profitable paradigms.To reinvent the sector.To give new meaning to all this upheaval.