Jodie Pearson is an assistant fabric technician from Next PLC. She is working for menswear. Also she cover casual trousers, and shorts.
Recently you have visited Zaber & Zubair Fabric week in Dhaka. What was your experience?
Basically, all of your new trends lined up for us. So any new initiatives, any new developments, route for us to have a lookout. So what we’ve done is we went around and saw the developments and then whatever qualities we like, we were sticking it so that we can get the panels back to the UK to ow our buying team.
What is the UK retail market situation now after covid and especially the ongoing war now in between Russia and Ukraine?
It’s quite difficult, actually. It’s very strange at the moment. Obviously just come out of covid and then payment being affected by quite a lot. So prices have gone up and prices going up, so it’s quite a tricky time for everyone across the world.
Sustainability is a big word now in the fashion industry, I want to know about the environmental commitment of the young consumers of UK.
I think it completely depends who the consumer is. I think you’ve got some younger generation that’s completely all that they focus on, and then I think you’ve got another part of the generation that if it’s got a single attribute, then they like the clothing, then we can buy. So I think it just depends on how much education they’ve had on the subject as well. So I think you’ve got quite a mixed market out there at the moment, because it’s very balanced between cost, price and sustainability, where we’re struggling with right inflation and cost of living. Sustainability might not be at the forefront of everybody’s minds at the moment, so they might start tightening purchasing and being more selective with what they’re buying. Sustainability, if it’s added to cost.
Are you looking or planning for new sourcing market in future?
Actually, I remember departments that I work with. We’ve got a huge amount of business in Bangladesh, so I would say that we come to and quite dependent on Bangladesh for new quality and production. So, from my point of view, I am very rarely deal with any of the territories in the world. Bangladesh is very, very okay for us.
Fashion industries a decade later from now, what is your thought?
Everything is very, very unpredictable in the fashion world. I really do, honestly, I think it’s dependent on how the economy keeps going. I feel like until we really know as I think, it’s a very big unknown for us all at the moment. So in terms of that, I think we can be very surprised in five or six years’ time, it could be a good surprise or it could be a slightly more negative surprise, to be honest with you.
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