Unlocking value for fashion & luxury brands
Strategic sourcing
We help fashion and luxury brands navigate supply chain disruptions by developing advanced sourcing strategies. These optimize supplier portfolios, geographic footprints and raw material management – ensuring cost transparency, resilience and a steady supply of essential materials.
Cost optimization
We support fashion and luxury brands in optimizing their indirect spend through comprehensive assessments, co-sourcing initiatives and spend control measures. These enable immediate cost reductions, improved supplier management and sustained profitability, even in the face of economic volatility.
Operating model enhancement
We streamline procurement operating models and foster cross-departmental collaboration to accelerate go-to-market times. That enhances communication, efficiency and integration, while also optimizing governance and sourcing structures, to keep brands competitive in fast-moving markets.
Challenges in the fashion and luxury sector
In today’s rapidly evolving fashion and luxury landscape, brands face significant challenges – everything from supply chain disruptions and cost pressures to sluggish go-to-market processes.
Growing geopolitical tensions
Recent geopolitical conflicts have led to supply chain bottlenecks, limiting access to crucial raw materials like textiles and precious metals. This has forced brands to rethink sourcing strategies and navigate uncertainty in global trade routes.
Volatile market conditions
Dramatic shifts in currency exchange rates, raw material costs, and inflationary pressures are eating into profit margins. Brands are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain pricing power while ensuring consistent product quality
Shifting consumer behaviors
As consumers demand more sustainable, transparent, and personalized experiences, fashion and luxury brands must adapt quickly. The pressure to meet these evolving expectations is straining financial models and operational agility.
Siloed organizational structures
Disjointed internal departments can delay critical decision-making, slowing product development cycles. Without a more integrated approach, brands risk losing their competitive edge as more agile competitors seize market opportunities.
How we support fashion and luxury brands?
Drawing on deep industry expertise, our fashion and luxury consulting team understands the unique challenges you face. By working closely with your team, we develop tailored procurement and supply chain strategies that align with your specific needs. Through a collaborative and hands-on approach, we focus on enhancing resilience, optimizing costs, and accelerate your time-to-market.
Our comprehensive services – from strategy to implementation – are designed to optimize every aspect of your operations, ensuring your brand thrives in a fast-paced environment.
Ensure seamless supply
Strategic sourcing
Supply chain disruptions, driven by geopolitical tensions and market instability, have made accessing some essential materials increasingly difficult. We help fashion and luxury brands navigating these challenges by developing robust sourcing strategies that include supplier portfolio management, geographic footprint optimization and raw material management, while also exploring opportunities like nearshoring to strengthen supply chains.
Our approach ensures complete cost transparency and resilience, enabling brands to navigate disruptions effectively. With strategic supplier partnerships, we help brands maintain a steady supply of critical materials while optimizing costs at the component level, ensuring they can meet customer demands swiftly and efficiently.
Case study: Driving €25 M savings through strategic negotiation
A leading British luxury fashion brand aimed to optimize its costs of goods sold (COGS) without impacting the quality of its products and turned to us to enhance their negotiation efficiency. Working closely with their teams, we secured over €25 million in savings by upskilling their teams’ negotiation capabilities and defining supplier-level strategies.
In addition, we also implemented a procurement performance process with clear KPIs, aligning the fashion house’s sourcing strategies with their long-term goals, and ensuring sustained impact and operational resilience.
Achieve fast P&L impact
Cost Optimization
In markets where there are severe cost pressures due to economic volatility and fluctuating demand, we help fashion and luxury brands reduce their direct and indirect spend to deliver fast P&L impact. Our approach includes comprehensive opportunity assessments, co-sourcing initiatives and the implementation of a spend control tower to better manage and monitor expenditure.
We engage in joint negotiations with our clients – leveraging advanced tools and benchmarks – to drive immediate cost reductions and improve supplier management. By optimizing procurement processes, we enable brands to work more efficiently and effectively to ensure profitability, even under financial strain.
Case Study: Unlocking €12.5 M savings through strategic procurement
For a globally renowned Italian luxury brand, we scaled up procurement efforts to deliver immediate value on their indirect spend. Through the execution of 12 high-impact initiatives, we unlocked €12.5 million in savings.
We supported key categories such as logistics and packaging, marketing and facility services. That was done by conducting tenders, leading supplier negotiations and implementing re-specification and demand management strategies. By optimizing these categories, we improved cost efficiency and supplier relationships. These actions enabled the brand to strengthen its competitive edge and sustain long-term operational efficiency in what was a volatile market.
Accelerate design-to-shelf
Operating Model Enhancement
Slow go-to-market times often arise due to siloed processes and complex organizational structures. To address these challenges, we focus on optimizing the procurement operating model and ensuring its seamless integration with other departments.
This approach enhances communication, coordination and efficiency across the entire organization. By conducting maturity assessments, benchmarking performance and redesigning operating models, we foster seamless cross-departmental collaboration. Additionally, we refine governance frameworks – and optimize both internal and external sourcing structures – to accelerate the design-to-shelf process.
This ensures brands stay ahead of trends and remain competitive in fast-moving markets.
Case Study: Optimizing the procurement operating model for faster go-to-market
We partnered with a prestigious Italian leather goods brand to streamline their procurement operating model and improve cross-departmental collaboration, which reduced inefficiencies that were slowing their go-to-market timelines. By conducting a thorough maturity analysis across 21 global entities and €200 million in spend, we identified key bottlenecks in their internal processes.
Through improved interfaces between procurement, production and design teams, we fostered seamless collaboration. This redesign of the procurement framework led to faster coordination across departments, accelerating the design-to-shelf process, and ensured the brand remained competitive in its fast-moving market.
Backed by BCG’s global network and advanced tools, we fuse global insights with local expertise – to drive tangible, P&L-impacting results that align with your vision and culture – empowering your brand for sustained success in a competitive market.
Supply Management Insights: Negotiation Excellence
This edition of the INVERTO magazine offers expert analysis and actionable insights to navigate today’s market complexities. Whether in fashion, luxury or beyond, enhance your procurement and negotiation strategies with guidance from industry leaders.
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