The document discusses consumer-driven product development in the fashion industry. It notes that product life cycles are getting shorter as consumer preferences change more rapidly. Industry leaders have made product development processes, organization, and systems a competitive advantage by developing the right products more efficiently and at faster speed-to-market. The document outlines best practices in five areas: effectiveness, efficiency, calendar management, organizational structure, and system support. It provides examples of how leading companies have improved their product development performance.

1. Retail and Consumer Brands Insights
Consumer-Driven
Product Development
www.kurtsalmon.com

2. Consumer-Driven Product
Development
Today’s fast changing and less predictable fashion market environment makes
it increasingly challenging for retailers and brands to develop the right pro-
ducts in time. Product life cycles become ever shorter and consumers change
their preferences from one day to another without prior notice. Industry
leaders have turned their product development processes, organisation and
systems into a distinctive competitive advantage. They succeed in developing
the right products in a time- and cost-efficient way – at an increasingly improved
speed-to-market.
A competitive product development translates
right back into higher margins. According to a re- approach with structured input from countries,
cent Kurt Salmon study, each week of lead time key accounts and own stores on future assort-
reduction results in a 0.25 percentage points in- ment needs.
crease of maintained margin. Kurt Salmon regular-
ly benchmarks fashion retailers and brands across assortment down to product attribute level,
the globe on five key performance areas in product based on sell-through data from key accounts
development: and own retail.
Effectiveness: Is a closed-loop planning and
controlling process in place to develop the right and future competitors’ activities, trend research,
products? Are consumer insights incorporated in customer and consumer feedback on ideas, con-
the most effective way? cepts and line previews, thereby also leveraging
Efficiency: Is the product development time- and new media (e.g. social networks).
cost-efficient? Are the right processes and KPIs
in place to measure development efficiency? consumer needs as well as optimising product
Calendar Management: Is the calendar properly price/ value.
managed to achieve competitive go-to-market -
calendar lead times? In total and by individual velopment process to ensure full integrity with
process step? financial and assortment plans.
Organisation: Is the organisational structure
(team set-up, location and reporting lines) ap- Kurt Salmon has helped many retailers and brands
propriate to support effective and efficient de- improving their effectiveness in product develop-
velopment? ment, leading to a better financial and operational
System Support: Do current systems solely man- performance (cf. figure 1).
age product data (PDM) or do they support the
complete product life cycle including workflow, Figure 1: Performance improvement through effective product
development
internal and external collaboration (PLM)?
Financial Operational
Effectiveness – Are you developing the right Performance Performance
products? Improvements Improvements
An effective product development uses planning
data, trend information and market feedback in a sales of 2 style adop-
structured, proactive way to create consumer-rele- - 5% through greater tion rate by 25 - 40%
customer relevance through structured
vant products that lead to increased adoption and
market data input
hit rates and an improved sales and margin perfor- margin
mance. of 1 - 3 percentage style hit
points through rate by 15 - 20%
better sell-through through shorter cal-
line/ buy plans, resulting in a clear and strategy-
endar lead times
conform framework to design and develop into.
2 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? KURT SALMON GERMANY

3. Industry leaders do not only plan their margin tar- the product design and development process. These
gets upfront but also keep track of them through- best practices are all based on the following five
out the development process if products are basic principles:
changed. They are able to translate the require- Parallelising activities, e.g. by blocking materials
ments of their consumers in terms of quality, inno- upfront before PO placement
vation, fashionability and price into detailed techni- Speeding up activities, e.g. by shifting techni-
cal and cost implications for product components cal developments to Asia reducing coordination
and production processes. As sourcing costs have time with suppliers, or by differentiating costing
seen a steep increase due to higher cost for mate- according to product type
rials and labour, engineering skills have become a Synchronising activities, e.g. by avoiding waiting
competitive advantage again. Understanding fab- time between design and technical development
ric and component prices as well as workmanship through better workload balancing and stag-
allows a more accurate product costing based on gered design
design, Bill of Material and technical documenta- Differentiating activities, e.g. by differentiating
tion. It also sets a proper basis for a systematic costing and technical specification level of detail
value engineering by according to level of fashionability of product
optimising costly, but non-value adding product Eliminating redundant activities, e.g. by reduc-
attributes or components, ing prototype/ sample iterations
replacing materials (e.g. fabrics, trims, acces-
sories) through lower cost alternatives of same A prominent example of where those principles
value from a consumer point of view, fall into place is material management. As fabric
differentiating quality requirements for work- is a core element of the critical path, earlier fabric
manship in products (e.g. number of stitches per availability is a key driver for lead time reduction.
centimetre) instead of seeking same high quality Upfront blocking reduces waiting times during the
standards for all products. development process and bulk production by 4 - 6
optimising engineered production together with weeks. Early and evolving material commitments
suppliers to reduce production minutes. to suppliers also reduce cost and improve quality,
especially if they go along with the consolidation
of different materials.
Kurt Salmon Success Story:
Product Development Revamp at European Industry leaders increasingly leverage overseas of-
Sportswear Brand fices for additional activities at the source to sup-
port faster decision making and reduce coordination
Background: The brand had made substan- times. They shift, for example, product development,
tial progress in their move from a manu- approvals of material, lab dips and samples at dif-
facturing-driven wholesale organisation to ferent stages to overseas counterparts. Kurt Salmon
a consumer-driven brand organisation with has supported many retail and brand clients in de-
a growing retail business; at the same time, fining roles and responsibilities of their overseas of-
product development processes and the fices and interfaces with headquarters.
related organisational structures remained Staggered design and development has proven to
centered around a manufacturing-driven be a key driver for higher efficiency. It comprises
mindset. three basic principles:
Approach: Kurt Salmon supported the client Start your product development with long lead
in benchmarking and developing the future time products. Long lead time can be due to
calendar vision and in defining the to-be pro- complexity of design, technical specifications,
cess and organisation including FTE require- materials and/ or workmanship.
ments, interfaces with product management Postpone developments with high demand risks
and sourcing, split of roles and responsibilities to a later point of time. High demand risks go
between headquarters and overseas sourcing along with high fashionability and can refer to
offices. the full style or single attributes such as material,
Result: 12% reduction of total lead time and colour and shape.
EBIT increase by 3.5 percentage points. Stagger handover of completed work packages
to the next function (e.g. from design to techni-
cal product development) instead of waiting un-
Efficiency – Are you developing the products right? til 100% completion of the full collection.
Leading companies have put various best prac-
tices in place to optimise their process efficiency, Differentiating multi-step costing, technical speci-
i.e. to avoid any unnecessary time and cost during fications and prototype sampling is another state-
www.kurtsalmon.com PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? 3

4. Figure 2: Differentiated product development
T
T
of-the-art approach to reduce time and cost during gic trade-off between cost, quality and time, but
the definition of product requirements. Fashion- rather optimise all of them at the same time. Best
able items with short lead times do not require the practice companies have defined key financial and
same level of costing, initial sketch and technical operational metrics to continuously improve their
specification details compared to standard prod- development efficiency (cf. figure 3).
ucts with longer life times and bigger quantities
where a detailed engineering can save substantial Calendar Management – Do you manage your
cost in production. Similarly, the number of proto- calendar properly?
types needed for approval and the number of cri- To optimally leverage an effective and efficient
teria to be checked at samples should be lower for product development it needs to be combined
existing or less complex products (cf. figure 2). with an integrated calendar management across
functions and company boundaries. Kurt Salmon
Efficiency improvements in product development has identified four distinctive management princi-
pay off quickly as they do not require a strate- ples in numerous projects around the globe which
distinguish best practice companies from others:
set targets, make them transparent, track
Figure 3: Performance improvement through efficient product and adhere to them.
development enforce early collaboration, internally and
with external partners.
Financial Operational
clear roles and responsibilities for
Performance Performance
each function in place.
Improvements Improvements
take decisions at predefined milestones
sales- prototype and stick to them.
men sample cost of iteration rate of 50
>40% in wholesale - 65% through stag- These principles need to be incorporated into cal-
through earlier in- gered design, devel- endar management. Best practice companies have
volvement of coun- opment and costing defined clear meeting milestones and handover
tries and key ac- process
points including timing, duration, input, output,
counts
fit and lab participants, roles and responsibilities, as well as
airfreight dip iteration rates key decisions to be taken. Such a disciplined ap-
express cost by up of 20 - 30% through proach to decision-making and timing is vital for
to 70% through clear clear communication
shorter lead times. Project experiences have prov-
roles and predefined and enforcement of
milestones for deci- technical standards en that often up to 30 - 40% reduction in overall
sion making lead time from concept development to in-store
date can be achieved.
4 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? KURT SALMON GERMANY

5. and considered a distinctive competitive advantage.
Kurt Salmon Success Story: Development team sizes should be reviewed from
Supply Chain Performance Improvement Pro- time to time or when changes in the organisation
gramme at Leading Eastern European Retailer have been made (e.g. outsourcing or shift of prod-
uct development activities to Asia). Kurt Salmon
Background: The company was performing knows the productivity benchmarks in creative and
well financially, but lagging behind operatio- technical development and the key impacting fac-
nally in terms of development efficiency and tors on developers’ workload.
calendar lead time.
Approach: Kurt Salmon was engaged to ulti- Do you have the right PDM/ PLM system support?
mately improve profitability by reducing time- A rising number of European retailers and whole-
to-market through improved process efficien- salers have started to critically review their current
cy, clear meeting milestones and a competitive system support for product development. Some of
sourcing and supply chain model. The project them have already begun to select and implement a
ranged from strategic concept development new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.
to the facilitation of cross-functional commu-
nication and the monitoring of calendar ad- Product Development Management Systems (PDM)
herence, using Kurt Salmon’s tracking tool. focus on improving product data management.
Result: Decrease of calendar lead time by 15% They prevent designers and developers from re-
in the short-term and 25% in the long term inventing the wheel during the process. They fea-
with phased guidance of the client from new ture sketch, colour and material libraries which
calendar development through specification can be leveraged every time a new style is created.
of key levers for improvement up to imple- They also support technical specification genera-
mentation. tion, updates and administration. Advanced cost-
ing tools allow for a bottom-up costing approach
which enables the designer to better design ac-
cording to margin and cost targets. PLM systems
Industry leaders work on differentiated go-to- enhance these functionalities, also covering work-
market calendars by supply mode, e.g. for NOS, flow management, as well as internal and external
Seasonal Replenishment, Seasonal Fashion and collaboration. By providing transparency on de-
Quick Response. Such an approach allows to bet- sign and product development planning and sta-
ter exploit key competitive priorities (e.g. time vs. tus data, they enable a real-time interaction with
cost) for different types of products. At corporate overseas offices and vendors and allow for their
level, overlapping calendars – both between dif- collaborative participation throughout the entire
ferent seasons/ collections and between different process. On the demand side, PLM systems are
supply modes – need to be carefully considered in able to create line plans with product briefs and
terms of resource availability and workload. Latest key metrics which can be planned and tracked
at this point it becomes evident that an increase in throughout the entire season. On the supply side,
the number of collections does not work with long PLM functionalities include vendor management,
calendars: overlaps between seasons become sig- production and capacity planning, and vendor
nificant and can no longer be managed anymore. compliance/ quality assurance (cf. figure 4).
Organisational Structure – Do you have the right Kurt Salmon has identified three stages of PLM
team structure in place? adoption a retailer or brand would typically go
A proper team structure is a strong enabler for ef- through (cf. figure 5). In the first stage PLM is not
fective and efficient development processes. In used beyond the walls of design and product devel-
product-driven companies cross-functional teams opment. Working in different systems for products
with product/ merchandising, design and techni- and sourcing does not allow making significant re-
cal development simplify the communication and ductions in cycle times or costs – product design
alignment on the demand side between product and development is just one piece of a larger pro-
planning and development. In rather supply chain- cess that needs to be managed. By moving to the
and efficiency-driven companies technical product second stage of PLM adoption, retailers and brands
development will be pooled into shared services link product development and sourcing. Sourcing
and be part of sourcing or manufacturing in order activities such as raw material management and
to ease the communication on the supply side. Ded- costing are managed through the PLM system.
icated teams for material and/ or colour research Furtheremore, information on supplier capabilities
and development become the more important, the and capacities will be stored to improve collabora-
more product development tasks are kept inhouse tion between product and sourcing. Working of
www.kurtsalmon.com PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? 5

6. Figure 4: Functionalities of PLM Systems
jects – from the definition of business requirements
to user trainings and go-live – with all major soft-
ware vendors, thereby keeping a neutral position.
Project experiences have proven that the following
Libraries considerations are crucial for successful PLM sys-
tem selections and implementations:
Planning
ries
Lib
Pro rcing &
1. Define a vision for the future: Identify which
tion
ra
ra
Des
ries
Lib
d uc
Develop- new capabilities are critical to the organisation
ig
Sou
n
ment in the next two to four years to understand fu-
Ma
Mg teri st
in
g ture requirements.
m al Co
Li
t. 2. Focus on critical functionality: Focus on func-
br ies
ar ar tionality which supports what is critical or
ies br
Li
unique to the business today and tomorrow and
Calendar Management,
do not become hijacked by non-critical func-
Supplier Management tionality. Different requirements of headquarters
Collaboration
and overseas offices need to be connected.
3. Plan for configuration and customisation: Set
expectations of time and budget for configura-
a central calendar allows focusing on the critical tion and customisation and be sure to include
tasks for all involved parties. While there are great the effort for internal staff in the evaluation
benefits associated with the link of product devel- process.
opment and sourcing in a PLM system, there are 4. Assess vendor itself along with other selection
even greater benefits to those retailers and brands criteria: It is not only about buying PLM soft-
who take a more expansive approach to PLM adop- ware, but also about gaining a strategic partner.
tion. The last of what Kurt Salmon considers the Evaluate the vendor itself, review who the ven-
three stages in PLM adoption takes PLM systems dor’s other customers are, how the roadmap is
outside a retailer’s or brand’s “own wall” and con- created and which opportunities there are for
nects suppliers to the system. Bringing suppliers your involvement, such as committees, user con-
into the upfront discussions about product design ferences, and meetings with the product staff.
and development shaves off greater amounts of 5. Use demo scripts rather than requirement lists:
time, cost and quality issues in the process. Demo scripts which articulate process flows pro-
vide greater clarity on how well a PLM system
Kurt Salmon regularly supports retailers and will meet your particular needs and help you to
brands in PLM selection and implementation pro- better differentiate the vendors.
Figure 5: Sample evaluation of individual benchmarking results
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
Product Product Product
Design & Sourcing Design & Sourcing Design & Sourcing
Development Development Development
PLM
Component Final Product
PLM PLM Suppliers Suppliers
Product Development Product Development and Collaborative Supply Web
Automation Sourcing Synchronisation
What Automation of product design and Improved coordination between PD&D and PD&D, sourcing and suppliers combine to
development function sourcing optimise entire supply chain
Why Need to cut new product introduction cycle Need to cut cycle times and reduce costs Substantial need to improve quality, time to
time through buying clout market and product costs
How Create central library of reusable designs Reuse of product components enables Visibility across entire chain enables players
and components quantity discounts to create the optimal work flow
What Impact 10 - 20% reduction in cycle times 20 - 40% reduction in cycle times; 40 - 80% reduction in cycle times,
2 - 3 % reduction in product costs 3 - 5 % reduction in product costs; 20 - 40%
decrease in product quality issues
6 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? KURT SALMON GERMANY

7. Figure 6: Sample evaluation of individual benchmarking results
Development Cycle Technical Development Cycle
Development specs to line close/ market week Fit approval to in-store
42 weeks 33 24 7 40 weeks 31 23 4
Key: As compared to industry averages – Example retail apparel
= Below average = Average = Best-in-class
6. Drive the implementation plan and phases: Kurt Salmon Product Development Survey
With PLM systems customers should be driving – Are you competitive?
the implementation planning. Splitting the im- Kurt Salmon has benchmarked more than 400 Eu-
plementation into phases with manageable ropean, US and Asian retailers and brands in the
packages is key. Business value, process change, apparel and footwear industry to date. The results
and organisational readiness should determine have created a globally unique database that al-
which functionality is piloted/ rolled out when lows fast and deep insights into the competitive
and to which brands/ categories. positioning of a retailer or brand when it comes to
7. Start change management early with package product development. Take part in the survey and
selection: Getting an organisation ready for a get exclusive access to this extensive database!
business transformation project takes a long Participants will receive an individual presentation
time and it starts with the package selection. of their benchmarking results in comparison with
the top competitors in their industry and segment
(cf. figure 6). If you would like to take part in our
Kurt Salmon Success Story: survey or should you have any questions regard-
PLM System Selection Support, Blue Print ing our service offers please contact Dorothea
Definition and Implementation at Leading Ern-Stockum or Dr. Sven Kromer at dorothea.ern@
American Outdoor Brand kurtsalmon.com or sven.kromer@kurtsalmon.com.
Background: Globally operating US footwear
company comprised of six brands was looking
to reduce the dependency on manual Excel
spreadsheets and disparate systems that con-
nected merchandising, planning, and product
development functions.
Approach: Kurt Salmon and the client jointly
reviewed the business processes, defined the
functional requirements in an RFP and in use
cases, and managed the software vendor eva-
luation and selection. In the following phases
Kurt Salmon supported the detailed process
design and the training of the team in the new
processes and system.
Result: The PLM implementation has been
part of a set of initiatives for a targeted 20%
reduction in go-to-market calendar lead time.
www.kurtsalmon.com PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT – ARE YOU COMPETITIVE? 7

8. ©2012 Kurt Salmon
Copyright Note:
Kurt Salmon Germany GmbH
Königsallee 11
40212 Düsseldorf
T: +49 (0)211 7595 0 F: +49 (0)211 7595 111
info@kurtsalmon.com
www.kurtsalmon.com
The authors:
Dr. Sven Kromer
Partner, Kurt Salmon Germany
sven.kromer@kurtsalmon.com
Senta Trorlicht
Senior Consultant, Kurt Salmon Germany
senta.trorlicht@kurtsalmon.com
Responsible:
Dorothea Ern-Stockum
Managing Director, Kurt Salmon Germany
dorothea.ern@kurtsalmon.com
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