Sean Slater
The retail industry is rapidly evolving, and trends that were once mainstays have been dying out. This has manifested as major store closures in the last couple of years, and unfortunately, we aren't out of the dark yet. In 2019, expect fast fashion brands like H&M and Forever 21 to start to show signs of trouble, according to Sean Slater of Retail Design Collaborative. While Slater doesn't necessarily expect major store closures next year, he says that these brands are on their way out.
“Fast fashion or fast retail is dying. The numbers are spelling that out. H&M and Zara are not doing nearly as well as they have been,” Slater, a principal at Retail Design Collective, tells GlobeSt.com. “There are a lot of ethical issues with throw away fashion. Online services that provide with customized clothing using robotics and replicate your style is going to really hit fast fashion.”
Fast fashion brands have been affected by the same emerging trends in retail as other brands, like a growing focus on the retail experience and customer service, but new clothing trends have also impacted fast fashion revenues. Consumers once wanted to mimic red carpet fashion styles, but today, it is popular for consumer to develop their own unique style. Slater says that there is an opportunity for fast fashion brands if they act quickly if they adopt artificial intelligence programs that can simulate a person's style and help them find clothes and put outfits together. “If fast fashion retailers could get head of that, they could take over that market. They haven't yet,” he says. “That is going to be the way that people shop. Digging through racks and racks of clothing is not the future. I think that is a trend that we are going to see the end of in the next year or so. Millennials have been talked about for the last 15 years, but really we should start focusing on Gen-Z.”
Fast fashion isn't the only retail trend that Slater expects to end next year. Grocery delivery efforts, he says, are also on their way out—despite the recent surge in attention. “Curbside pick-up has been a start and stop process over the last few years. We have seen a ton of investment from Walmart, Kroger and Target into this idea, but I think that we are going to have another downturn in the importance of that,” he explains. “This year, there have been a huge capital investment into curbside pick-up, but I think that those investments will go on pause. It is going to be much more about the in-store satisfaction and much less about how fast you can pick up a bag of groceries.”
The trend was almost totally dead until Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods earlier this year. “It was almost dead, but when Amazon got into the space and played a very strategic game of free and same-day delivery, grocers have had to up their game again,” says Slater. “I think that there is going to be another cycle where it is less important to get people things fast and more important to have meaningful interaction with your customers.”
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Kelsi Maree Borland
