How is the sourcing landscape likely to shift in upcoming seasons, and what strategies can help fashion companys and their suppliers to stay ahead? Mr. GLF , Executive Director of Group MF, shares his insights.
With 11 offices in 5 Continents we tapping the collective wisdom of our 95 colleagues through our open innovation platform.
Virtual sampling is quickly bringing products to life, bypassing the time and resources needed to create physical product samples.
Group MF is creating the supply chains of the future, with a mission to make life better for people everywhere along our global supply chains.
Founded in 1987 in EU (Portugal), our initial startup business focused on trading leather goods, shoes, textile from Portugal to the EU Zone.Today we are a multinational corporation that manages complex supply chains for brands and retailers around the world.
We offer end-to-end supply chain solutions from product design and development, raw material sourcing, factory selection, production management and quality control, to in-country logistics, global freight management and e-logistics.
Over 30 years, despite major changes and disruptions, innovation has been, and continues driving our business. Connecting bright minds and crowdsourcing ideas, using rapid prototyping methodology, design thinking, and collaborative work spaces are just some of the ways we innovate at Group MF everyday.
Our business is built upon our people, our time-honored values, financial strength, our culture of innovation, our approach to sustainability and the social impact we make through Group MF Foundation.
With more than 11 offices and 8 distribution centers in 5 Continents across the globe, as well as our extensive network of suppliers, we are dedicated to investing in the future where our reach makes life better for people everywhere
Our values form the basis for our culture, business strategies and brand.
They bring us together and guide what we do.
We are entrepreneurs: Our company was started by famely entrepreneurs in Portugal in 1987. They joined forces to create and develop a successful business by identifying where the opportunity for sourcing products met customer needs in faraway markets. That same entrepreneurial spirit of agility and simplicity is very much alive today and continues to drive the way we support our customers, suppliers, the industry and communities to grow.
We are humble: Having evolved from a ‘start-up’ to a global supply chain orchestrator, creating value for our customers has been driving our success. Our mission is to provide innovative supply chain and logistics solutions that meet the needs of our customers and add long-term value to their businesses.
We are family: Trust and integrity are the cornerstones of our long-lasting relationships and essential to foster loyalty and teamwork. We care about our people, our customers, vendors and communities and about creating a sustainable future together.
We are a global team of fashion industry experts who brings innovative products to life.
We constantly experiment new ways of working to deliver value to our customers.
We take our responsibility to our employees, customers, suppliers, and the workers in our supply chains very seriously. We recognize that our business can influence positive change in our industry. Improving both working conditions and the livelihoods of workers and their families in our sourcing communities is important to us.
At GROUP MF we understand that building sustainable supply chains cannot be done alone. We work with suppliers around the world and alongside industry partners to address the development challenges our industry faces.
Our suppliers are located in key production markets around the world which allows us to flexibly move production across markets, balance capacity constraints and meet customer needs.
Out of our 280 supplier base in16 differents countries and more then 92 suppliers are regularly active with orders twice or more per year. Asian suppliers play a key role in our production supply chains.
With 11 offices in 5 continents, we are all about tapping into the collective wisdom of our 86 colleagues through The NiRVEN our open innovation platform.
Sustainability is a part of our culture and provides us with a guiding framework for how we manage our impact while contributing to the development of the communities in which we live and work.
We manage our global supply chains in a manner that is consistent with our overall Sustainability Strategy.
Our initiatives to enhance supply chain sustainability focus on three areas: managing risk and furthering compliance along our supply chains, collaborating with customers and industry partners to build better supply chains, and sourcing responsibly.
We’re tapping into the collective wisdom of our 95 colleagues worldwide through The NiRVAN, our open innovation platform, where our community of innovators propose and collaborate daily on around 150 ideas, from innovative fashion textiles and leather products to supply chain improvement. Offline rapid prototyping sessions and brainstorming sessions create opportunities for our people to collaborate with Group MF experts for solutions.
Speed to market is critical to our business. One of the ways that allow us to move faster is through the use of virtual sampling as it significantly reduces the amount of time required to design, produce, handle and seek approvals for product samples. Product designers create collections of virtual samples for customers to review in a digital showroom. Beyond the benefits of time and efficiency, virtual sampling offers a more sustainable approach to traditional design and sampling methods.
From planning to production, we’re working with our manufacturers to boost agility, speed and transparency in the supply chain through the use of technology. Manufacturers can optimize their operations with the visibility provided. They can also quickly identify the source of quality issues and minimize downtime.
Our company builds business strategies based on a macro overview of the economy and where we see it changing in the future. Research teams of the GROUP MF Global Retail & Technology specialize in how retail and technology trends intersect and build collaborative communities of knowledge; while GROUP MF Business Intelligence collects, analyses and interprets market data on global sourcing, supply chains, distribution, retail and technology, with a particular focus on business trends and developments in EU and other countries.
We’re building a culture of innovation at Group MF and makers are part of that story. Every day, engineers who works for our fashion business, looks at how the point-of-sales experience can be more interactive and personal for shoppers.
Passionate and talented professionals make up a global pool of designers, whose skill of translating trends into great products is both an art and a science. They design creations for our fashion business.
GROUP MF Fashion, part of MF Group, is dedicated to the development of distinctive and worldwide fashion brands. Our brands have direct presence in around 600 retail stores, complemented with wholesale and digital platforms in more than 80 countries.
When speaking of customer relations, many would focus on creating unique products and solutions but would not realize that human resources’ initiatives in uplifting talent capability could “wow” customers and win their trust.
The direction for many companies in recent years has been to narrow and tighten their supplier base as well as where they do business. These are the most vulnerable to disruption.
Companies need to diversif y their supply chains now as the best hedges against uncertainty.
They need to enable speed and focus on integrated supply chain strategies rather than on cost alone.
If they can also recognize the value of having the right processes that deliver the right product at the right time, then it’s possible that disruption will have less of an impact.
With the current macro conditions, Upcoming years is likely to be another challenging for the apparel industry.
However, it brings opportunity for retailers and brands to rethink their business models and how they operate to stay responsive against the pace of change and recognize opportunities when they arise, such as the digitalization of the supply chains.
Digitalization will help companies enable speed and innovation within their organizations and supply chains, and focus on the demands of consumers through data.
This will help them get the relevant product to the consumer at the right time, and at a fair price.