See now buy now: A revolution for luxury supply chain management

Abstract

Fashion collections used to be for the eyes of editors, buyers and jour- nalists. Yet, digital technology and IT transformation have opened this once-enclosed world by transforming it into an open access arena. Fashion trends are immediately exposed through social media; however, in the current fashion system, there is a wait of at least six months between runway shows and retail availability. Some might wonder if today’s consumers could still wait for what a traditional fashion calendar offers. To this end, the entire fashion system is about to be reconfigured. See Now Buy Now (SNBN) emerges as a business model to make a fashion revolution by putting the fashion items immediately on sale after runway shows. Nevertheless, it is extremely vague in terms of what this movement will constitute for those involved in supply chain (SC) operations. Thus, it is time to interrogate if this movement could build a new system with improved production processes to fulfil demand more efficiently. Looking at the SNBN revolution with the standpoint of academic researchers, this study aims to take a closer glance at what is bound to change at SC and operations level. Furthermore, it is set to identify what is required to enable SNBN in terms of SC structure and capabilities.