Fast Fashion Part 2 amazing crediable PDF

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Fast Fashion Part 2 - Motivation Six months on, Evolve has continued to grow. With minimal guidance or intervention from head office, serendipitously most stores are hitting their sales targets. Whilst this suggests Evolve's decentralised expansion strategy has succeeded, head office is apprehensive that this success won’t be sustainable if various aspects are not adequately unified across stores. This 'success' relates to both Evolve's external (eg, brand equity, customer-experience perspective) and internal (eg, management practice and staff experience) functioning. For this reason, the executives are holding focus groups and have asked managers from a variety of stores to come share their experiences at Evolve. The executives want managers to describe their store environments and ways of working with staff and customers. For a more holistic understanding of store practices, the executive team have also planned to visit the stores and speak to shop assistants. The CEO Alex hopes this will give head office greater insight into what is working and how to replicate or unify the management of Evolve stores globally, as well as share knowledge to diffuse good practice. Store A and B were part of these focus groups sharing their store experiences. The executive team heard that whilst all stores complete the same basic tasks – like greeting customers, recommending the right apparel, understanding the products, using the POS system, purchasing stock and keeping an inventory of the stock – the managers and shop assistants spoke very differently about accomplishing these tasks and what happens in their individual stores. Managers’ Focus Group: In the manager’s focus group, Tayla (Store A) mentioned, “I try to be inclusive of all staff’s ideas and wants. Like, shop assistants have mentioned that they don’t enjoy stock-take, so I now try to alternate stock-take shifts between shop assistants. I’m also happy for the shop assistants to take ownership for the tasks they’re doing. What I mean is that, if you’re doing stock-take that day, I’m super happy for them to go about it as they see fit or is most effective for them – as long as it gets done and is accurate.” This took Andrea from Store B by surprise. She reported to the group that she has a fairly structured way of running Store B. She trains staff according to her preferred and most-efficient method, which means the processes of finishing tasks (like stock-take) are standardised across staff. Andrea believe this leads to fewer mistakes and better transparency. Tayla responded that this structure feels “too controlling” and seems to indicate a lack of trust of the shop assistants. Whilst the approaches are different, both Tayla and Andrea seem to achieve the same outcome, so the focus group conversation moved on. Tayla and Andrea share some similar management practices. They both hold monthly meetings about the new clothing that will appear in store and work to educate the shop assistants on their key selling points. They both think shop assistants’ greeting and communication with customers is paramount. Andrea mentions that when new apparel comes in, she likes to set mini sales challenges for staff, whereby shop assistants compete against one another to sell the largest amount of old stock possible. Upon hearing this, Tayla thought to herself that Andrea’s approach feels like excessive selling and that is not in keeping with environmental principles. She worries that Evolve is turning into any other fast fashion retailer…but stays silent. Whilst Evolve sets stores’ KPIs, Tayla has never explicitly set KPIs for her shop assistants or encouraged them to ‘over-sell’. Instead she encourages staff to speak to customers about the product’s benefits but not to push sales. Andrea, in keeping with the challenges she sets, gives staff strict sales KPIs and manages these according to the store environment or stock levels – sometimes it will be to increase the basket size of consumers and other times to sell specific pieces of apparel.

With such different approaches to management, yet seemingly similar outcomes – Alex (CEO) decided it was imperative to speak to staff about their experiences in store. Speaking to shop assistants in Store A (who work under Tayla), most enjoyed the working conditions. They spoke a lot about the company’s vision and how they enjoyed being able to work within a company that was helping change fast fashion and be kinder to the environment. One of the workers, Wen, even said “whilst I don’t like monotonous work, and let’s face it… sometimes this work can be a bit repetitive… the knowledge that these monotonous tasks amount to a more sustainable planet makes me less grumpy when I’m needing to fold the same shirt for the 30th time that day!” Another shop assistant, Marianne, also remarked on her ability to change how store processes were done. Since working at the store she has come up with effective and unique ways of doing stocktake and organising the registers so the flow of work (receiving items from customer, scanning, folding, bagging) is more efficient. Whilst Marianne appreciates being able to make changes within the organisation, she expresses that she “feels [she’s] taken initiative time and time again without reward…. It’s wearing a bit thin”. Wondering how Tayla’s flexible KPIs were working for the group, Alex asked a range of shop assistants about them. Wen noted that she thought Tayla’s use of loose KPIs helped her focus less on over-selling, “which isn’t in keeping with the company values”, and more on making sure the apparel purchased was meaningful and suitable for the consumer, “aspects of consumption that Evolve should be trying to stress if they want people to minimise environmentally destructive waste”. Marianne had a slightly different take on operating towards flexible KPIs: “I understand that they fit the corporate vision…. But sometimes I’m just not sure how I’m performing or if I’m any good at this work. I have a friend at another Evolve store and they use KPIs more strictly. Apparently, they are rewarded for meeting their KPIs? I don’t know what the rewards are, but I wish I could be rewarded for achieving the same KPIs.”

With this in mind, Alex decided to speak to two workers, Hiromi and Ariel, from Store B (working under Andrea) about KPIs. Hiromi has been working at the store, under Andrea, since it opened and has consistently performed well against Andrea’s ever-increasing KPIs. Hiromi likes the challenge and feels the KPIs give her something to focus on and work towards as well as a regular benchmark or appraisal for her performance. With a lot of retail experience, Hiromi is accustomed to being managed and evaluated via sales indicators, “because I’ve been consistently making the KPIs set for me and other staff members, Andrea has started to increase my personal sales targets or asked me to sell the slower moving products. Initially, even as my target increased or I was given harder things to sell, I seemed to be able to meet them, although I definitely had to put in more effort. The reward for reaching my KPIs was intrinsic”. Hiromi moved on to explain that recently her KPIs had continued to increase, but she could no longer reach them. Ariel’s story was slightly different, in that she was struggling to reach the initial KPIs set for her by Andrea. She expressed that she was trying really hard, but just couldn’t manage to hit the sales targets and was at a loss as of what to do. “after I expressed my concern, Andrea was super generous with her time and helped train me for selling at Evolve. I feel she gave me the tools I needed to translate the effort I was investing into the results that were expected of me.” Ariel reported that KPIs gave her early indication that she needed to be working differently, but now she’s hitting her sales targets, she wonders why she bothers? “Andrea sets us ever increasing sales targets and ‘challenges’… but if we try super hard and reach them, nothing happens, we just pat ourselves on the back.” Hiromi and Ariel have been working in retail as shop assistants for a few years and are keen to progress further, perhaps to management. However, it seems unclear how to go about this....