Fashion Business: Steps to Success Research Paper

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'Offshoring' can occur within the same company and involve movement of work to a different location of that company outside of the United States, or to a different company altogether" (4). Simply put, outsourcing is contracting with an outside company in any location, while offshoring is contracting with a company outside the United States.

Examples of Exclusive Wholesale Manufacturers

One example of a wholesale manufacturer that sells exclusively is Mona Lisa Fashions Inc. This "is a full-service cut & sew apparel contractor serving the women's, children's and men's apparel markets." They are located in Allentown, Pennsylvania and are encouraging designers not to outsource or offshore their products but to come to them instead. Another example is Sports and Sports International, a company that manufactures sports accessories and apparel. On their website, they announce, "We are one of the most prominent manufacturers, suppliers and exporters of an exclusively broad range of sports products equipment & accessories throughout the world." Finally, there is Fashion Bella, an exclusive jewelry manufacturer headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

Why Go Overseas?

The history of outsourcing and offshoring began when companies began to acquire so many other companies that they could not deal with everything they had to deal with in-house. Originally they would outsource to domestic companies. However, once they began to realize how much money they could save by outsourcing in other countries, they began not only doing it when they needed help, but simply to save money and increase profits. According to Reh (2009) "Companies began outsourcing work to the lowest bidder and lost sight of the effect it had on the company except for finances.

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Outsourcing this work to 'foreign' or 'offshore' companies, solely to take advantage of lower labor rates in those countries, became known as offshoring."

A major problem with outsourcing and offshoring is that companies lose control of operations. According to Enlow and Ertel, "ineffective relationship management is often at the heart of outsourcing failure" (51). It is much more difficult to know if standards are being met and if rules are being followed when the work is being done in-house. Once you hand it off to someone else outside the company -- especially in a foreign country -- you are taking the risk of losing control. For example, Kathie Lee Gifford found out the hard way that her clothing line was being manufactured in "sweat shops" using child laborers. This could have completely destroyed her reputation if she had not handled it correctly. As it was, her integrity was brought into question and her name and her clothing line were forever tainted (Anderson, 1996).

Summary and Conclusion

Fashion may be fun, but it is a business just like any other business. This means it requires business-related knowledge such manufacturing, distribution and marketing. In this paper I have discussed the six steps to developing a fashion line as described by Elaine Stone in her book Fashion: Fun! Fame! Fortune! I have also discussed outsourcing and offshoring and how and why decisions in this area are made. From this research I have concluded that unless you win Project Runway, developing a fashion line is far more complex than most people probably think.

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