Gap to adopt 'speed to market' strategy

For many high street retailers replenishing product on the shop floor is a logistical nightmare. Especially when certain product lines work better than expected, and re-ordering stock across your supply chains takes many weeks, at which

point the trend may have already passed.

In response, high street giant Gap is adopting a “less is more” philosophy combined with improved ‘speed to market’ so that it is able to take fewer risks with its assortment.

Chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy said the company has improved its ability to restock or increase orders of popular items in season.

"The minute the read comes out and we see an opportunity, we can move on that really quickly," he said.

He described this process as a way of reducing risk, "because we’ve been tightening up our assortment, slowly and thoughtfully, across all our brands for the last couple of years," he added: "I think the team has recognised that in some cases, in categories that matter to us, less is more”. The focus that each one of our brands is taking to different levels across different categories, I think, provides a little bit of de-risking of the assortment," Murphy added.

The company is also helping its ‘speed to market’ by developing stronger relationships along the supply chain.

"As speed came in and speed became more important…what the team and the new structure turned to is really fabric platforming and working upstream with our mills," said Murphy. “So for the longest period of time, we’d worked directly with vendors, that was 99 percent of our relationships. And now we have much stronger relationships with mills and fabric, first and foremost. The way we’ve got our merchants and designers to understand it is, if you want speed and you understand the gross margin upside of speed and the customer satisfaction that comes with that, the only way to be able to do that is have fabric that is ready to go," he concluded.

Image: Gap campaign