PGDM - Fashion Retail-Understanding Textiles

She is a dean at Rajasthan's JJT University. She is also a Director of VAITARAN, an organization that assists the poor in earning revenue.

Our guest speaker today has a Ph.D. in Textiles and Clothing from S.N.D.T.University in Mumbai. She has completed entrepreneurship training and holds a diploma from NMIMS in Business Management for Voluntary Service Organizations.

It was an overwhelming experience meeting Dr. Manjula and learning about her experience in the retail fashion industry. We learned about how the retail fashion industry works, from a single piece of fabric to a finished designer garment, how to evaluate the retail market, and top retail businesses such as Provogue, Westside, Pantaloons, ITC, and Reliance being on top in R&D, How they can use human buying behavior to help them run their business.

Discussion Points

1. Impact of Location

Retail businesses sell items or services to customers for their consumption, use, or pleasure. Location decisions have a major impact on a retail outlet's success, as the location is an important factor in consumers' store choice. ... Establishing a retail store can, for example, influence shopping patterns, traffic and pedestrian flows, or the retail structure of a town.

2. Fast Fashion and Slow Fashion

In fast fashion human resources are exploited ,since they are not compensated for their work. On April 24, 2013, a building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, including five textile firms, collapsed, killing at least 1,132 people and wounding over 2,500 others. Despite the magnitude of the losses suffered by victims and survivors of the Tazreen and Rana Plaza tragedies, no compensation was given. A small number of global purchasers and local players gave voluntary contributions to sufferers in the months following the events.

Slow Fashion is an approach to producing clothing that takes into consideration all aspects of the supply chain. It is holistic and considers the whole product lifecycle. Slow fashion is sustainable and doesn't view products as disposable. Slow fashion is ethical and looks at the connections between things—raw materials, the environment, human labor, etc.

3. Difference between Responsible consumer and Alert consumer

Responsible consumerism or ethical consumerism is when customers make intentional purchases of products, opting for those that have minimal to no negative impact on humans, animals, and the environment where as  Alert Consumers is one that knows the  correct price of the garment.