“I met a client. He told me: You have to develop for me 15 colours, for 10 leathers, in two days. We have a chemical and a machinery testing departments inside our company. We can do it. Depending on the result, our rating will change at the brand: if we confirm to be a reliable supplier, we will continue to work with them”. It is a testimony, one of the many, collected in the three days of Lineapelle96 (February 20-22) at Fieramilano Rho. Many innovations are incubating in the fashion industry. Impulses are coming quickly to maturity. Speaking of speed, one of the impulses with the greatest impact is, between capsule collections, fragmentation of the seasons and see now buy now, the contraction of time between the creation of a collection and its delivery to the stores. The dear, old scheduled work is a thing of the past. “Orders from the brands have increased in number, but they are even in terms of volume – the exhibitors explain to us -: it means that they ask us to produce more articles, but smaller surfaces for each article”. While the delivery time of the finished material are now around 25 days, the time dedicated to development has been reduced: “In order to stay in the market you have to play ahead of designer labels – is the lesson that echoes from Lineapelle96 -: guess in what direction will go the mood, find technical solutions that may be of interest to the brands”. The effort required by the leather supply chain is not just about style and research, but also operational. Stocks, financial liquidity, machinery and software: the term timeliness has more variations, the company structures must be able to respond to solicitations from different points of view.
