Blockchain in Textile and Clothing Supply Chains

Dear Everyone,

I hope you are all fine and healthy and you enjoy the nice weather in Sweden :)!

This is my first blog entry coming in a little bit late due to various reasons. But I am not going to bore you with these and will cut straight to the chase.

For the past weeks I have been researching about blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains. This research field has been incredibly interesting and challenging at the same time - keeping my brain busy with questioning existing conditions, behaviors and the industry in general.

To give you some background information about the research field: Blockchain is a relatively new invention by Satoshi Nakamoto and was introduced in 2008. Simplified it is a global public ledger that allows data to be stored and shared in an accessible and secure manner in a broad network, where trust is not necessarily existent, by means of different encryption mechanisms and mathematical functions. The technology was first introduced in the financing sector, in the context of Bitcoin, and has been widely adapted to various fields since. In the context of supply chain management, blockchain is i.a. used to make products during production stages traceable and to make a transparent supply chain feasible unlocking many advantages while also carrying challenges.

In my research project I am analyzing the status quo of blockchain in the textile and clothing industry by applying the approach of a systematic literature review. This process proved to be more difficult than anticipated since hardly any literature in this specific field exists. Therefore, the sample in review is comparably small for a systematic literature review. However, according to Pautasso (2013) the need for a literature review where the amount of published research as well as the amount of literature reviews are low can still be motivated in the context of identifying new research questions. Hence, the aim of my research project is to review commonalities and differences between the analyzed literature and appoint the status quo of blockchain in textile and clothing supply chains, yielding future research questions in this field as a result.

I hope you found this entry interesting and I was able to give you a small insight into the research field. If you are intrigued to know more, I am always happy to swap ideas and knowledge and discuss about this topic. I wish you all a wonderful day and a joyful and relaxing summertime :)!!

All the very best,

Laura

Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Hej everyone! I hope everyone of you is staying safe and healthy!

It has been over a month since my last blog entry and I was able to finish phase #2 since then, meaning that I conducted the literature review based on my search strategy. In the last month I scanned article after article to find the right information to answer my research question: What are the risks prevalent in Textile Supply Chains and what are the strategies to cope with them in terms of Risk Management?

The 2^nd phase was very intense, because it is hard to decide how much and how detailed the articles need to be read to not overlook the information I was looking for. 

During the 2^nd phase, I realized that I needed some adjustments of my search strategy. As a result, I excluded theoretical and conceptual papers, because they do not reflect practical strategies to cope with risks. By focusing on empirical papers, I want to make sure to gather information from real life practices. 

I gathered all the important information, such as basic information like title, authors, journal, etc., as well as the main information which included the research question, research method and findings/results in an excel table. This table allows for a good overview and helps as a base for the 3^rd phase which will focus on analyzing my findings. 

Another step of preparation for the 3^rd phase is to identify and summarize the risks prevalent in Textile Supply Chains in order to apply the strategies gathered in the literature review. It is very interesting to see that although all kinds of risks are prevalent in the Textile Supply Chain, the recent literature mainly focuses on the sustainability risks and the environmental and social impact of this industry. This makes me realize how important and urgent this issue is and that an improvement in the future is more than necessary. And only the future will tell if the disruption caused by the pandemic will function as a “restart”. So many online articles talk about how the pandemic highlighted the grievances in the textile and fashion industry, how unfair and unethical the purchasing practices from Western giant companies are, how much more resilient a sustainable supply chain can be and how this could change our consumer habits. This is still a scary and uncertain time, but it also can bring positive change we are all hoping for!

So, the upcoming weeks I will be analyzing my findings to see what the literature found as strategies to cope with risks in the Supply Chain. I will keep you updated how that is going! 

Stay safe! 

Second Update About Product Management Internship at a German Luxury Fashion Company

Hello everyone,

It is time for another Update about my Product Management Internship!

While we watch companies and whole countries responding in various ways to crises, many people wonder what is depends on when conquering those challenges successfully. 

On the one hand, crises may include smaller challenges for manufacturing industries if, for example, a customer demands adaption or the company wishes to revive relationships with high-volume wholesalers. On the other hand, bigger scale challenges such as Covid-19 may occur, in which fast response and most commonly production adaptions play a crucial role. 

 

As of my experience, the successful mastering not only comes down to efficient and effective management but is often grounded on other level decisions, just like sophisticated product management practices.

Meaning, in the meanwhile, the Covid-19 crises has impacted my internship company as well, wherefore fast actions were required by the CEO of my internship company. As for now, I have been busy working on analyses for the upcoming collections in 2021 with regard to the styles and fabrics that were meant to be produced. The Pre-Spring and Spring/Summer 2021 collection volumes had to be reduced by about 30%, still achieving the minimum margins. Therefore, by means of analyses, I was able to reveal products with low margins and based on that my supervisors either adjusted the costs of goods sold, or the retail prices; if not eliminating the product completely.

Overall, the changes mainly lie within the Pre-Sales Phase of the luxury fashion products because afterwards everything is in production already and cannot be stopped anymore, it has to be sold in the stores anyway. What is more, the suppliers’ circumstances were never left aside, and the company was striving to not cancel too many orders, but rather postpone them for the upcoming collection release.

Retrospective, having a very good established product management system with skilled workers who take major decisions is key; containing of ongoing analyses that are supported by sophisticated workflows is essential to endure an efficient risk management as a whole company in times of crises. At this fashion company agility was essential for this to provide a more flexible workflow. Thus, the strategy and roadmaps can be adapted more easily according to management decisions and customer inquiries. 

 

Beyond these issues, in times like these, company’s general weak points are identified. We realised that digitalization of collection material was our extensive problem. Up to 2020 all collection handovers and the sales phase activities afterwards were hold as very big sales events in the different showrooms of the company all over the world. Thus, all collections were shown physically, having samples set up in the locations and the salespeople came to understand the new/adapted styles, touch the fabrics and experience the feel of the products. However, with restricted travel possibilities, these physical events were cancelled, wherefore all products have to be digitalized now. For some product groups digital showrooms are established already, but unfortunately not for ours yet. This depicts a major challenge. Accordingly, I have been working on visualizing the products lately and setting up presentations precisely so that the retailers and key account manager will be able to understand the new collections for 2021 coherently and somehow imagine the fit, feel and texture of the styles. The success of the implementation definitely also depends on the product group since, for example, polo shirt styles can more easily be constituted digitally. Whereas suits have more complex constructions anyway and its fabrics are in most cases very hard to display digitally. In the latter case, the salespeople need way better know-how about the fabrics and imagination while they are also much pickier due to the higher prices of suits in comparison to, for example, polo shirts. 

 

Yet, the departments’ proactive behaviour in previous months and coherent understanding of their products and processes emerge to have definitely helped my team itself with achieving the requirements set up by the board in the twinkling of an eye. As for now, our actions contributed decisively to the company’s successful crisis management. 

 

 

// Josephina 

Is it too much to expect clothing to fit? (3)

I don’t like to say it, but yes.

Since we come in all verity of shapes and we’re so different due to the fact like ethnicity or demographic and yet we expect brands to make clothing that fit all of us. And this is moderately a new expectation while historically it was very normal for everyone to get their clothing tailored, custom made, or do alterations by themselves. With the rise of fast fashion and ready to wear clothing, cloths are so cheap and abundant that we really care less about how it fits and don’t want to spend extra money to get it tailored according to our body.

As a customer if you know your measurements and always compare your measurements to a brand’s size chart, that may help, also make sure you know how to measure yourself properly. With such huge variations in size and shapes it actually feels like a miracle that someone can walk into a store and find a piece that fits him/her perfectly (though I’m pretty sure that miracle’s name is Spandex 😆). 

It’s easy to blame the clothing industry for not making clothes that fit, but after I go through my survey result, it seems really impossible to create clothes that will even fit the majority of people. If it fitted 1/4 of people regularly well, then it actually doesn’t seem so bad if you look at all the variation in our bodies have.

The main takeaway from this study to me is that, we should never blame our bodies if clothes off the rack don’t fit. We shouldn’t be criticising ourselves when clothes don’t fit, it’s an issue with the clothes not us! This project really showed me how incredibly unique everyone is, of the 50+ participants. I think that’s pretty incredible. We love to compare ourselves to others, but I actually think it’s really freeing and empowering that everyone’s body is uniquely theirs I think that uniqueness is something we should celebrate 💕.

I found working on this topic extremely fascinating and would really love to hear your thoughts! Also, if you have filled out the survey, thank you so much for contributing to this project!

Regards//Khadiza

The Challenging Increase of Online Customer Returns in Fashion - A literature Review (3)

As we now go into a long-awaited summer vacation, the final field study report is finally handed in. The motivation to sit inside and write has faded during the last weeks, and thereby did the report not get finished in time for the presentations in the beginning of June, however as expected. What took most of the time was formulation of all the themes derived from the literature review, followed by the conclusion of the study. Such a simple thing as organizing all the references took several hours as well.

The last couple of days before the submission of the report has been spent with my aunt. We did go through the study together, and by doing so getting important and good insights from her as a bystander. Since the tuition with Jenny has been held online making it more difficult to show my progress in words, and also that the last scheduled time was in May, my aunt has been as a mentor for me in the process of writing my final report. It is always useful to have someone outside of your process to have a look at it, because that person sees things with new eyes that you don't due to blindness of your own work (just my own thoughts). Together, we managed to get a grip of how the second part of the report should be formulated which I had such difficulties of understanding (where concepts of the study where to be defined). Since the purpose of my report isn't about defining a concept, but to give an overview of the field of research on the topic of online customer returns and show gaps for future research, it was hard to understand what I was suppose to "define" in that section. The section ended up being called "The challenge with online customer returns", and it shortly treats the main challenges with that phenomena, finishing of with the purpose of the study in order to show the importance and relevance of doing my study on the chosen topic.

Now a hectic job awaits with creating a power point presentation for the seminars on 18th June, where I plan on presenting my results. I hope to make it on time, otherwise there is nothing else to do than await the seminars in August. The presentation needs to "wow" the audience, and thereby time and accuracy is needed for the creation of the power point. You only have 15 minutes to present, so it is of big importance to carefully chose what parts to bring forward from your field study report. The audience, my fellow students, should learn and bring something important with them from my presentation.

Clothing Fits…. Who Exactly?

A few weeks ago, I posted a questionnaire that included a link to a survey. I wanted to get some insight into the mystery of clothing sizes and fit and have actual data on how people choose their sizes. First, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who filled out the survey! You input has been incredibly helpful.

It’s taken me quite a while to wade through all the numbers and to be honest the scope and variables of this kind of data collection were a lot more complex than I initially anticipated. However, I found it really interesting and also was quite surprised by what I learned.

Entirely my study with Jenny Balkow so far explore that fit evaluation at an individual level is subtle and very complex. Also, women’s fit expectations relay on interpretations of individuals bodily aspirations. If these expectations are not met by sizing system of fashion retailers the following cloths are more likely to remain unsold can produce textile waste. 

I must admit, I learnt a lot from Jenny and being able to explore the fact from different perspective, which made me more interested on this topic that I don´t mind investing more time to know more about how people choose size than I initially expected.

Your comments are appreciated and Happy summer!

Thank you,

Khadiza

Blog 1/3: My first weeks as an SEO-Intern at the German company Tchibo

Who would have thought that this year will be year to accept the need of change, declare change, work for change and become the change? Who would have thought that the Pandemic would affect us? It seemed to be so far away, away from everything. But it affected us all in different kind of ways. 

But I hope that everyone is safe.

From the business perspective, Covid-19 had a huge impact on the fashion industry especially retail. Due to this, my first internship got cancelled last minute, just a day before I actually would have started. But in the moment, I remined myself that everything happens for a reason. I ended up applying for other internships last minute and finally got the acceptance from the German company Tchibo in the beautiful city Hamburg. The History of the company started with selling coffee but today Tchibo’s product range runs from fashion to furniture and even insurances. The company follows a multichannel approach and has a unique business concept of presenting “Themenwelten” every week. 

It has been almost four weeks already that I have started the internship at the SEO department at Tchibo. I have never experienced the first weeks at a company like this. Everyone is working from home and I was kind of nervous, not meeting my fellow colleagues, not having interactions with other people and being by myself. But everything went pretty well in the first weeks. My lovely superior Annika allowed me an easy start and she is always available for questions and answers. The SEO-Team is located in the “Business Development Department” at Tchibo and works hand in hand with “SEA”, “Onsite Marketing”, “Affiliate Marketing” and “Online Sales”. My department is responsible to generate higher traffic on the website itself and getting higher rated at Google.com, while working with Google Analytics and optimizing keyword analyses. After the first weeks I really felt that the support was very much needed and that my team is treating me as a full team member and not really like an intern. Due to that I really enjoy learning new things and taking responsibility for some important upcoming tasks. The company is very much aware of change and is constantly trying to take this into consideration. Every week the whole business development department is having a virtual coffee chat to talk about important tasks and updates to inform all team members. Every team member takes action in the meeting to present their current tasks and processes they are working on. 

Before the internship I already finalized the topic of my field study. I will conduct a benchmark analysis with the focus on the “User-Interface-Flow” of Tchibo and compare this with the fashion industry, while using pure online players like About You and Zalando. During get-to-know-meetings with the most of my team members my first impression was that the user interface flow and especially the optimization of the check-out process is a huge discussed topic and has relevance to my department. I see a lot of potential to combine the user interface flow with focussing on the check-out process for the upcoming field study. I am really looking forward to work on it and to get more insights about the changes the company is about to make in regard to optimize the website. I will keep you updated in the next blog entry about the process of my field study. 

#staysafe

DiTex at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research in Berlin (2/3)

Week Nr. 10

After six weeks; I must conclude that it took me longer than I had expected it to get into the project. It is certainly due to the home office circumstances and consequently thereof the unavailability of quick check-ups, excess to material and longer waiting periods for feedback. Nonetheless, I adjusted myself somehow to this new way of working and conducted a literature research during the last weeks. Moreover, I developed a framework for my interviews based on the literature research results, compiled a list of possible partners and created an interview guideline. This week I am contacting all potential interviewees while continuing to write the theoretical and methodology part of the final paper.

Apart from my own project work, the internship offered me the chance to get an insight into the complexities and challenges of a multilingual trans- and interdisciplinary project. I took part in several phone calls and online workshops by the institute and its project partners. To an extent his complexity also partly influenced my field study and therefore I want to share some reflections upon this: 

For the digital tracking solution, I collaborate with a Tech-Start-up. It took me a while to realize that there is only a limited overlap between their interests and my scientific oriented approach in the project. Together we brainstormed a list of questions for laundry companies which turned out to be too specific for my scientific research. It is the method of material collection that bears the biggest challenges: while companies just ask for information if its needed via a spontaneous phone call or a mail without any methodological basis, the information gathering process has to be more theoretically consolidated in a scientific study in order to ensure reliability and validity. That means a seamless documentation and a clear and single method. From a scientific point of view companies use a method and material mix as a basis for the decision-making process. While in research one tries to avoid these method mixtures to reduce the complexity and factors that could distort the results.

Withal another difference between a cooperate and a scientific way of working is the pace, while research is an iterative process, companies need to make pragmatic and fast decisions due to the time-pressure which is sometimes not the best in terms of a logical argumentation. Furthermore, I observed a language problem, often terms are used differently in different branches, in a scientific or in an industrial context. Moreover, firms tend to use something that I would call “marketing language” which aims to sell a product or a service, including less numbers or profound facts rather than addressing the emotions of the counterpart. This way of information sharing contributes to the slow speed in those science-industrial collaborations because both sides have a lack of understanding what information quality is needed and how the information could be useful for other partners within the project.

My biggest learning during that internship is that science and enterprises have a different way of gathering information and it needs a strong moderator to constantly create a space of mutual understanding to turn collaborations into a fruitful outcome for both sides.

Research Assitant Internship with the Handelslabbet, Blogpost #2

Hej,

The research assistant internship together with Jenny Balkow and the Handelslabbet is proceeding and has sent me onto a steep learning journey.

As I have reported in my last blog post, our goal is to develop a digital retail lab where marketing experiments can be conducted with.
So far, a member of the Handelsbladet developed a basic version of a webshop from where we can base the experimental design.
Offering is a wide variety of research directions that can be departed on with this digital retail lab, our goal was to find a common theme we are all interested in and start developing an experimental guideline from there. This guideline should serve as a starting point for a funding proposal to further develop the digital retail lab.
During one of the proceeding Zoom meetings, we decided to focus on the topic of consumer trust and decision making support during online shopping.
My task then was to do a literature review of the theoretical foundations of trust, how it can be measured, and how it relates to personalization, and inform the Handelslabbet team about my findings.
What I found was, that trust is a theme with a wide variety of definitions, approaches, and views. While most researchers agree on the importance of trust in the conduct of human affairs ( Bhattacharya and Divennev, 1998), there is also an acknowledgment of the difficulty of finding a common, all-encompassing definition (Hosmer, 1995; Husted, 1998; McKnight et al., 2002, Rousseau et al., 1998). Scholars tend to define trust according to their disciplinary worldview resulting in different views depending on whether the scholar works in the discipline of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and so on (Rousseau and Sitkin, 1998). Trying to summarize the different views, similarities, and research streams wasn’t easy for me. The number of articles covering different angles of this topic seemed endless to me, and until now I fear of having missed out on an important puzzle piece of the construct. Databases like Elsevier recommend similar or interesting articles after every click resulting in a tab bar of several kilometers and the task of coming to a presentable result seemingly impossible. Suffering from FOMOA (fear of missing out on an article) led me to consult one of my friends that has experience in the study of social sciences.
She reassured me that I was on the right path, that when I keep finding similar citations and findings in articles I am nearing the threshold of finding more news and that my initial approach of starting to code and cluster my notes was not as bad as I thought.
Finally, I managed to arrive at a presentable end-result and shared my clusters with the researchers of the Handelslabbet.
The variety of definitions, seeming similar and different at the same time, leads to scholars employing different measures of trust in their research models and experimental designs.
Some measure “purchase intention” as a result of trust while others view “click-through intentions” as the same. But does the action of purchasing from an online shop or clicking on an ad show that one trusts?
This question continues to guide me through my present task, which is: stop reading articles, work with what I have, analyze the existing research models and hypotheses, and create my research model out of the findings.

Jenny and the research team guide me through this process and I can say, that so far this experience has been a first for me and a huge learning curve.

 Do you think choosing your cloth´s size is problematic?

Since all of us come from many different ethnicity and shapes, it is often challenging to foresee how a garment would fit someone who is little far or not similar in size to the one featured model. 

Due to Covid-19 unexpected situation I started my research assistant internship little late with Jenny Balkow. I have done my Literature review and made a theoretical framework. Now I wanted to get some insight into the mystery of clothing sizes and fit and want to have actual data on why choosing sizes and shapes are difficult. By far the most common complain I hear is that people have trouble finding clothing that fits, so I was hoping a survey might show me what common dilemmas people have with choosing right fit  and maybe we could have some stats that would be helpful to show brands where improvements with sizing and fit could be made.

Hope you will help me to fill the survey, the survey link is as follows-

https://forms.gle/qLPHdjQp4oyEa8pE8

Thank you,

Khadiza