Introduction

If the fashion manufacturers’ and retailers’ delivery cycle is considered for once, the lack of straightforwardness becomes apparent. The delivery and buy and sell dates can vary in different sectors, being various within them. And, designers and retailers often work adhering to their fashion calendar deviating from industry standards.

If you are among the designers, retail store owners, or international brands endeavoring to penetrate the fashion market of Canada and the US, know the calendar of delivery, seasonal selling, and shipping updates to retail shops.

There is an Underlying Change

In 2016’s March, associated by the Boston Consultancy Group, CFDA or the Council of Fashion Designers of America published their study regarding New York Fashion Week’s future. The subjects included in this study were buying now and wear now merchandise, delivery cycles, and relevancy of in-season. The study unanimously indicated that the market was going through a ripe time for the change. And CFDA would be weaving the dialogues of brands and retailers to adjust deliveries gradually throughout the year.

Conversations such as it is nothing new in the fashion industry as the industry executives are known for being focused on in-season merchandise and associated customers’ requirements for decades. And, now, because of the incorporation of IoT (Internet of Things), the delivery cycle has reached its boiling point.

Now, let’s go through the fashion calendar guideline the industry is adhering to for decades.

Market Dates for Woman’s Apparel

In the apparel business industry, the timings of development and manufacturing of products, presentation, and marking are decisive. Seasonal fashion product developers devote five lines for every season while six selling seasons are there. Besides, the production houses of staple and primary products are eligible to have one or two seasons each year. Your selling season can differ, corresponding with your Sales Representative. However, for some years, a tendency of some retailers to sell new items for prolonged periods instead of focusing on the specific selling seasons has come into view. The fashion calendar in the women’s wear industry typically contains six to four collections for a year.

Spring  1

• Sale Dates: October to January
• Delivery: Last half of January to March
• Delivery Dates: 1/30 – 2/28 – 3/30

New York market week and the Fashion Week both fall in September. West Coast Market remains strictly adhered to along with other US regional shows that continue even during the latter half of October.

Spring 2 / Summer

• Sell Date: October to January
• Delivery: Late March to May
• Delivery Dates: 3/30 – 4/30 – 5/30

Fall 1 / Transition

• Sell Date: Late January to March
• Delivery: Late Middle of July to August
• Delivery Dates: 7/15 to 8/15

In February, New York’s Fashion Week is organized West Coast Market and other regional shows follow and remain vibrant through late March to the middle of April.

Fall 2

• Sell Date: March to April
• Delivery: Late September
• Delivery Dates: 9/30

Holiday

• Sell Date: May to June
• Delivery: Later Half of September
• Delivery Dates: 9/30

Resort and Cruise

• Sell Date: May to June
• Delivery: October
• Delivery Dates: 10/15 – 10/30

Children’s Market

The buy and sell date of the market of children’s accessories and apparel encompasses three seasons, including Spring-Summer, Back-to-School, and Holiday.

Men’s Apparel Market

Earlier, for seasons, men’s apparel manufacturers used to showcase two different collections of classic garments altering fabric types. But at present, the expansion of the market has levitated the lines and style of men’s products to be analogous to women’s products. And plenty of brands are now designing highly-styled attire, focusing on seasons. The buy and sell date of the men’s apparel market surrounds January to February for fall purchasing, while July to August for Summer/Spring attires.

Accessories Market

Spring

• Showroom ready samples arrive on November
• To reach retailers by January
• Get displayed in stores in February

Spring 2 / Summer

• Showroom ready samples arrive on January
• To reach retailers by May
• Get displayed in stores in June

Fall / Holiday Preview

• Showroom ready samples arrive on May
• To reach retailers by July
• in stores in August

Holiday

• Showroom Ready samples come by August
• Reach retailers by October
• It gets displayed in November

How to Optimize the Buy and Sell Date in Your Fashion Calendar?

Before you imitate the venture of optimizing buy and sell dates in your fashion calendar, the big question to ask you is how many collections you will design and launch. Typically, the majority of manufacturers go with two to six collections yearly. Now, there’s yet another question. Would you like to divide your merchandise simply for the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter seasons? Or, you are inclined to penetrate the market with more frequent launches targeted at fashion seasons like Spring, Resort, Fall, Winter, Resort. You can also publish theme-specific collections on holidays and occasions on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, New Year, Independence Day, and more.

It’s the most significant decision you need to take on behalf of your brand. However, many experts suggest keeping it straightforward. Some of the brands also appear six times in a year with producing only two collections.

Launching a New Collection

As you have arrived to organize your fashion calendar for being present in the seasons you desire with innovatively designed clothing, you know that collection launches mean substantial financial investments. And, while you plan to commit it on a very high level, a plethora of processes arrive with the needs of minute implementations.

Hence, within the buy and sell dates, you require working on product planning, product designing, initial samples, adjustment and fit testing, developing more samples, product details, manufacturing, packaging, ensuring availability for sales, advertisements, and many more.

Being in the merchandise industry, you may have already identified plenty of other segments unspecified here. Then what’s the way of keeping it close to minimal. Especially when your company is yet to avail of unlimited budget and crowds of professionals? Simply, by adopting an optimization process.

The Optimization Process

• Make Investments without Limiting Your Flexibility

Because of the buy and sell dates, you essentially need to market your products right in time. But, that shouldn’t make you sacrifice your design and quality of products. Hence, identify items that encompass significant fiscal investments, periods, and have fewer chances of alteration. Thus, you can complete other segments in time, having the flexibility of making necessary changes based on market shifts, customer feedback, and responses.

• Design Two Collection to Cover Four

Though the fashion calendar is separated into different segments, you don’t have any liability for designing a separate collection for every season you want to appear. Many of the brands appear in summer, Spring, Festival, and Resort, designing only one collection. Cause according to those brands, all of them denote the same vibe; often, it’s related to desert or beaches.

Afterward, they start working on the Winter/Holiday and Fall at once because the similarity is present here as well, and they are very celebratory and earthy. However, it’s never a rule, and you have all the right to feel otherwise. So, think and find out which collections would be suitable for your brand. This process maintains the cohesiveness and fluidity in the appearance of one collection to another and enables you to optimize your buy and sell dates more effectively.

• Batch Multiple Things Together to Defeat Time

Product designing is just a facet of a multidimensional work called publishing apparel collection. Hence, it would help if you act on other aspects like creating initial samples, adjustments and fit testing, product photos on white, and final sample set at once. Staring to work on these processes at the same time will save you lots of time and money you can invest in other things. It could facilitate you with the flexibility of trying another batch of samples right before the release. In other terms, you have more time than you need for devoting to collection launches prep activities like line sheets and more.

• Be Adaptive to the Changing Market

Don’t you want to know about things you should complete within time? Have to forget about the manufacturing part? As long as you want to strictly adhere to the fashion calendar, you should never delay your final manufacturing process. And, while your one collection is getting sold on outlets, you will be learning minutely about to whom, how, and when your following collection will influence purchasers at the most. The ever-changing behavior of the fashion market is known to all. And, hence, you may have to perform alteration works with your products to keep their relevancy intact. Continuing to manufacture products with similarities with other attires that have already performed poorly in the market would waste your time, energy, and resources. At the same time, an endeavor such as it would have an only hollowness to offer in your buy and sell date optimization.

Keeping the consumers as the prime priority, many experts have already stated that the final filter will always be the consumers. In the battle of fashion, what people wear becomes the winner. And, no designer should make clothes only to showcase them in dirty museums.

Some Important Factors to Keep in Mind

Keep it Appropriate

A fashion collection can comprise any attires, ranging from casual wear to sports outfits to evening wear. However, optimizing buy and sell dates wouldn’t be advantageous if you end up making a collection missing the appropriate seasonal appeal.

What Happens if It Isn’t Apt?

The majority of the purchasers can’t even think about buying winter wears before October. And, purchasing spring fashion often becomes something much ahead of time. The weather is yet another dominant aspect that can lessen the turnover in the retail sector.  But, following the four below-mentioned tips, you can easily avoid such problems.

• Organize your fashion calendar, keeping the aspect of unpredictable weather in mind.
• Also, provide enough efforts to design non-seasonal and sustainable attires.
• Designing outlet windows with the fashion focused on the ongoing season and weather should be beneficial.
• Proffering a ready-to-buy collection on the catwalk directly is another option you should follow.

When you have chosen the collection to launch and decide activities to batch together, you can continue selecting the launch dates. If you desire to sell your designs directly to customers through your brand’s online presence, the launch dates can look like this:

• Resort: January
• Spring: March
• Summer: June
• Fall: August
• Winter: October
• Holiday: November

Where are you Going to Market Your Product?

Although your fashion calendar comprises four seasons, it’s essential to know that all of your customers won’t experience those seasons alike. While the winter will bring snow to some of them, snowless winter would feel like spring to many. While the USA experience chills in winter, there’s scorching summer heat for consumers residing in the equator.

Now, designing apparel amidst so much diversity is a challenging task. But, before everything, you should check your location and the location of your customer base. If you are creating designs for a consumer base nestled in the region you are from, you can stick to your design plan and continue to portray the seasons in your works. If the garments you are designing are focused on consumers from another geographical area, you should know how different seasons in that region feel and look like. When you identify the region’s season pattern, you can easily market your designed products. Moreover, you will have enough convenience in adjusting your timeline according to it.

Conclusions

Have you already decided what you want to do in your following fashion calendar? If yes, it’s excellent, but you should never restrict your inspiration from designing some apparel, even if it’s for a different season. But, back your design with enough plans and make the production done before the time of its release.