Outsourcing has long been synonymous with garment manufacturing. During the industrial revolution, new technology made it possible for clothes making to move away from homes and into factories, giving way to the birth of the ready-made garment industry. By the 1960s, customer demand for cheap clothing lead to the rise of fast fashion. Smaller workshops and factories could no longer cope with demands and so brands and retailers began outsourcing their manufacturing across the globe.
Outsourcing work abroad means that fashionable items can be produced quickly and at attractive prices due to lower wages, reduced resource costs and duty free exports to western countries. A large pool of suppliers provides retailers with much more flexibility compared to in-house manufacturing.
Typically, the term “outsourcing” is used to describe a manufacturing process whereby an order is passed from the retailer down to multiple external suppliers for them to create the desired item(s). This way, each asset; whether a care label, a button, a zip or something else is made by a specialist factory. Often a retailer will have a list of nominated and approved suppliers, from which each component can be ordered. But, what about when the nominated suppliers aren’t used?