Social Media & Fast Fashion- How Is It Changing The Industry

Fast fashion brands choose their next design based on what’s popular and what they believe people will buy. However, with social media influence in the fashion industry, you’re probably wondering about social media & fast fashion and how they work together. Social media is a significant influencer of our day-to-day life, and it also affects our purchases and new trends. On the other hand, fast fashion is a term for brands that mass-produce garments at a low price. These brands aim to be affordable and trendy. 

These fast fashion brands naturally attract people because of their affordability and trendiness. Social media is no different as it helps foster the popularity of these brands. People wear these clothes and share them online, promoting the brands in the process. Most people would argue that social media is where trends arise. Therefore fast fashion brands keep an eye on social media trends to determine what they need to sell next. This article takes a deep look into social media & fast fashion to understand the connection and how one influences the other. So, without further ado, let’s take a look.

What is Fast Fashion?

Fast fashion is the mass production of trendy clothes and ensuring they appear in stores in record time. The speeding up of the production process is to ensure that these new trends get to the customers while it is still new and trendy. The idea behind fast fashion is to react to demand in record time. Fast fashion became quite popular in the 1990s as fashion brands began to seek new ways to increase their profit significantly. In addition, supermarkets created their line of cheap clothes, which put high street fashion brands under pressure. Therefore, fast fashion came into existence. It reflected the need for speed in every part of retail fashion. 

Many brands came up with the solution of creating designs based on catwalk trends and sending them into production immediately to speed up the production time. As a result, customers could now purchase trendy clothes almost immediately. As a result, more fast fashion brands have popped up in different parts of the world over the years, and most people no longer wait for seasonal collections. 

Benefits of Social Media in the Fashion Industry

To understand how social media & fast fashion work together, it’s essential to learn the benefits of social media. In this section, we’ll explore the top benefits you should note.

Cultivating Brand Image and Increasing Awareness

It’s pretty easy for fashion brands to create and build their fashion brands through social media. Social media platforms are also ideal for increasing brand awareness by connecting brands with their customers. You can create digital ads and sponsored posts that make you more visible to your target audience with social media. A fashion brand can also engage with consumers using audience-based content on these platforms.

Building Customer Connection

With more engagement strategies available on social media, the connection between the fashion brands and customers will grow. This will help to drive sales significantly. Social media has become a part of marketing and selling products. Therefore, it connects brands to customers easily and ensures fashion brands provide customer service. With social media platforms, solving online queries are even easier. 

It Increases Traffic

Connecting fashion brands with their target audience will also improve traffic to the stores. New customers will find all they need to know about these fashion brands online. Additionally, social media increases transparency between customers and brands and therefore helps to increase traffic from both sides. In addition, fashion influencers tend to promote their favorite brands and share information about them that could convince their followers to try out the brand, leading to higher traffic.

Instant Communication

Another top benefit of social media to the fashion world is that it allows customers to communicate with the brand directly. Instead of calling in or emailing, a customer can get immediate responses about exchanges, queries, and refunds. These questions are answered immediately, helping to improve the engagement between these brands. 

Additionally, by providing satisfactory and effective customer service, fashion brands build customer loyalty. Social media’s influence on communication between a brand and its customers cannot be over-emphasized.

Targeted Ads

Social media allows you to run ads targeted at a specific audience. It provides you with statistics and insight to help you reach your ideal customer and increase sales. Additionally, several e-commerce companies use analytics to learn their customers’ needs and areas that need work. They also use social media to ensure they’re exactly where their customers are, paving the way.

Social Media & Fast Fashion – How Social Media Influenced Fast Fashion

Social media brought about a new age of connection in the fashion industry. Whether it’s a trend, a post, or a movement, people’s actions on social media usually significantly impact the real world. Fast fashion, in particular, has witnessed tremendous transformation through widespread trends and influencers. The continuous change in the social media world created the ideal environment for fast fashion to thrive. Therefore, it is essential to consider how social media influences fast fashion.

Trends Move Faster

Social media is famous for connecting people from around the world. Another use of these platforms is for the instant dissemination of information. It influences the fashion world by speeding up how fast fashion comes and goes. Previously, a style would take months or even years to move from one state to another. However, social media speeds up the process, and today, trends can travel overnight.

Due to this, trends are no longer defined by a particular place or a set period. The previous 20-year fashion cycle no longer exists. Social media allows people to take note of fashion from different eras while also choosing the pieces that speak to them most. With this increase in visibility, trends are going in and out faster than ever. The faster a particular item comes into style, the faster it will be out of style. Therefore, timeline pieces rise in popularity slower and hand around much longer.

This quick visibility of fashion pieces also causes most people to buy and discard clothes quickly to keep up with trends. People now discard clothes twice as quickly as they usually did decades ago. The lifespan of clothes is significantly shrinking, and the fast-fashion companies benefit from the shrinkage. Clothes are becoming single-use. Therefore, to remain trendy, consumers rebuy a wardrobe each season to stay trendy. This isn’t bad for consumers; the excess waste is terrible for the environment. 

Customers Now Call the Shots

Another important influence in this social media & fast fashion article is customer-dictated trends. Now more than ever, customers call the shots on what’s trendy and out of vogue. Due to this, most fast fashion brands rely on the internet to determine what will sell before designing and producing them. As a result, most influencers and similar accounts can create a high demand with just a post. Emma Chamberlain’s influence on turtleneck and yoga pants sales almost overnight is an example.

In the past, designers and manufacturers set the trend based on their current releases. However, customers are now at the helm of affairs and set the trends while these companies try to respond to the demand. This change in dynamics significantly affected how the fashion industry operated. It also often leads to excess waste because of how fast the customers move from a trend. The fast manufacturing of clothes is also bad for the environment because the clothes are often fad. 

Retailers are Struggling to Keep Up

Today, retailers struggle to keep up with how fast these trends come and go. Social media is driving the shift in consumer behavior. The spending pattern is changing faster than the fast fashion industry can keep up there. This also leads to increased competition as more brands struggle to keep up with demands and stand out from the competition. To keep delivering the fast-changing styles, some fast fashion brands are cutting corners and developing faster supply chains. This is the main foundation of fast fashion. Even top-quality brands are also learning from these fast fashion companies and responding to customer demands quickly.

Fashion Haul is Encouraging Overconsumption

One of social media’s influences on fast fashion is fashion hauls. It is a trend that influences the buying habits of most consumers. Hauls usually occur in video format; it could be on YouTube or TikTok. They’re one way for creators to try on, review, and show their viewers a large quantity of clothing quickly. Most consumers praise hauls for helping customers view hones reviews and showing how these clothes look on a person because website images can be quite misleading. Unfortunately, although hauls are helpful, they also encourage poor buying habits and overconsumption of trends. 

Most of these videos draw people in by advertising the money they spent to purchase these clothes. Fashion hauls usually showcase low-cost, trendy outfits from fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova. Therefore, it will prompt many consumers to buy and rack up a large amount of clothing in a single order. Viewers are also given the idea that quantity is far more important than quality and therefore ignore the dangers of fast fashion. Although there’s nothing wrong with reviewing a couple of pieces in a video, excessive hauls only change the way people value clothing and fashion trends

A Great Online Class: Instagram Strategy for Business Growth

If you are interested in learning more about how you can leverage the power of social media to grow your brand, we recommend taking a look at the online class “Instagram Strategy for Business Growth”.

The course is currently under promotion, but you can use the discount code: T_BROWNLEES-PROMO to get an additional 10% discount on your purchase.

This online class offered by Domestika, at a very inexpensive price covers all you need to know to create an effective Instagram strategy that delivers value to your audience and helps you gain reach to your business. If you apply to the course through the link below you’ll be supporting 440 Industries, and we thank you for it!

Final Thoughts

There is a continuous discussion about social media & fast fashion and how they work together. It’s clear that social media & fast fashion are intertwined, and social media plays a massive role in how fast fashion works. Although social media has some positive impacts on fast fashion, there are also adverse effects. Most importantly, social media is now dictating how the fast fashion industry works. We hope this article helps you effectively understand the impact of social media on fast fashion.

Was This Article Helpful?

Social Media & Fast Fashion- How Is It Changing The Industry Social media has affected trends, styles, and purchases from the beginning; this article explains how social media & fast fashion work together.
5 1 5 1

You're Never to Cool To Learn New Things

Please note: 440 Industries is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

#explore

MORE ARTICLES FROM OUR BLOG