Time to be Slow? Slow Movement in the Apparel Business
For decades, the dynamics of the apparel industry have been eager to catch volatile consumer demands and trends. Accordingly the ubiquitous phenomenon allows rapid production, short lead time, increasing number of fashion seasons with lower cost materials
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x High quality and authentic: Raleigh Denim provides quality elaborate products. A high quality product is more durable, and craftsmanship has longer lasting value, compared to easily copied commodities. Each pair of Raleigh Denim jeans has a unique number by hand stamp, representing authenticity. Without industrial machines, the brand uses original shuttle looms and traditional construction methods in low speed. Generating far less stress on the yarn, the slow production makes the fabric-touch softer and more durable. Also, it improves product quality allowing richer interaction between producers and clothes. x Idiosyncratic and asset-specific: Rather than hinging on large amounts of copies by machines, Raleigh Denim tries to produce idiosyncratic piece of clothes based on assets such as contemporary fit and special chain-stitch hemmer. While stressing each pair is one of a small batch, the brand gives special meaning to the product, in contrast to standardized and homogenized fast-fashion systems. x Grassroots and sensitivity to local history and culture: Raleigh Denim is a small team established by a husband and wife, and employs some local artisans. The brand deals with the whole process, ranging from initial design to finishing, under one roof. Also, the brand is 98% local by using local material and facilities (Biemann 2009). Since North Carolina was one of the mainstays for denim production in the past, local mills and artisans still remain. In a 100-year-old local mill that weaves the fabric on the original shuttle looms, Raleigh Denim achieves the U.S.-made jeans. METHODOLOGY The procedure of this study was comprised of two steps: item scale generation and scale purification. First of all, the conceptual constructs of slow fashion were identified through extensive literature review. An open-ended survey was conducted with a convenience sample of 31 college students to define slow fashion in their own words. The open-ended survey provided very short descriptions of slow fashion to avoid any confusion of respondents who were not familiar with the ‘slow fashion’ terminology. As a result, their responses were considerably consistent with the concept found in literature. Based on the common domain, items to measure slow fashion orientation were created as well as modified from relevant scales (Kim and Damhorst 1998; Tian, Bearden and Hunter 2001). 69 items were initially generated and 43 items were retained after redundant, vague and misleading items were deleted or modified. Content validity was examined by both nonexperts and experts of apparel and consumer areas. Then, a survey was distributed to a convenience sample of 129 college students in order to purify the generated scale. The items were measured by a five point-likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree) and the final 121 responses were analyzed after discarding incomplete responses. RESULTS Exploratory Factor Analysis By a principal components method with varimax rotation, exploratory factor analysis was undertaken. After retaining items
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