• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.161-172
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• 2019

This study examines the characteristics and recent changes of the Hanbok industrial cluster in Gwangju Metropolitan City, in order to understand the problems in the activation of the Hanbok industry and to seek future policies. A total 32 companies comprise the 'Small Manufacturer Specialized Support Center of Hanbok' and were surveyed with a 41 questions with questions in four categories. The Gwangju Hanbok area has been in existence for more than 40 years and was composed of small groups of one or two manufacturers. They are experiencing the same difficulties as other Hanbok clusters, such as the aging of workers, the downturn of dress culture, and changing consumption paradigms. However, since 2015, various efforts have been made in order to seek countermeasures to cope with such difficulties, particularly with the foundation of the 'Small Manufacturer Specialized Support Center of Hanbok' with the support of the Ministry of Small Venture Business. This study focuses on the alterations in the current Hanbok industry due to the IT industrialization as well as the changes in the locations of the Hanbok clusters due to the revitalization of old towns by local governments., The results providing an opportunity to appreciate the problems therein and seek the solutions. Small manufacturers of the Hanbok cluster are trying to improve their entrepreneurship, digital technology application, and knowledge in accordance with the socio-economic trends, but they have limitations to practically apply it to business, barely keeping the minimum production base. The central government and the Gwangju should reinforce and expand the support for marketing and public relations for the Hanbok to foster the designer population, to establish mutual brands, to raise brand awareness, and to promote the technological perfection of the individual businesses, to allow them to cope with the current market trends, in order for the technological development and firm settlement of the local Hanbok industrial cluster.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.4-14
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• 2010

Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. This study addresses the specific types of collaboration used in the fashion industry while also examining strategies that have been most successful for fashion companies and perceived benefits of collaboration from the customer perspective. In the present study we define fashion companies and brands as collaborators and their partners or stakeholders as collaboratees. We define collaboration as a cooperative relationship where more than two companies, brands or individuals provide customers with beneficial outcomes utilizing their own competitive advantages on an equal basis. Collaboration strategies entail information sharing and other varied forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial to the company and stakeholder groups. Through collaboration, fashion companies have pursued both tangible differentiation, such as design and technology applications, and intangible differentiation such as emotional and psychological benefits to customers. As a result, collaboration within the fashion industry has become an important, value creating concept. This qualitative study utilized case studies and in-depth interview methodologies to examine customers' attitudes concerning collaboration in the fashion industry. A total of 173 collaboration cases were identified in Korean and international markets from 1998 through December 2008, focusing on fashion companies. Cases were collected from documented data including websites and industry data bases and top ranked portal search sites such as: Rankey.com; Naver, Daum, and Nate; and representative fashion information websites, Samsungdesignnet and Firstviewkorea. Cases were collected between November 2008 and February 2009. Cases were selected for the analysis where one or more partners were associated with the production of fashion products (excluding textile production), retail fashion products, or designer services. Additional collaboration case information was obtained from news articles, periodicals, internet portal sites and fashion information sites as conducted in prior studies (Jeong and Kim 2008; Park and Park 2004; Yoon 2005). In total, 173 cases were selected for analysis that clearly exhibited the benefits and outcomes of collaboration efforts and strategies between fashion companies and stakeholders. Findings show that the overall results show that for both partners (collaborator and collaboratee) participating in collaboration, that the major benefits are reduction of costs and risks by sharing resource such as design power, image, costs, technology and targets, and creation of synergy. Regarding types of collaboration outcomes, product/design was most important (55%), followed by promotion (21%), price (20%), and place (4%). This result shows that collaboration plays an important role in giving life to products and designs, particularly in the fashion industry which seeks for creative and newness. To be successful in collaboration efforts, results of the depth interviews in this study confirm that fashion companies should have a clear objective on why they are doing the collaboration. After setting the objective, they should select collaboratees that match their brand image and target market, make quality co-products that have definite concepts and differentiating factors, and also pay attention to increasing brand awareness. Based on depth interviews with customers, customer benefits were categorized into six factors: pursuit for individual character; pursuit for brand; pursuit for scarcity; pursuit for fashion; pursuit for economic efficiency; and pursuit for sociality. Customers also placed more importance on image, reputation, and trust of brands regarding the cases shown in the interviews. They also commented that strong branding should come first before other marketing strategies. However, success factors recognized by experts and customers in this study showed different results by subcategories. Thus, target customers and target market should be studied from various dimensions to develop appropriate strategies for successful collaboration.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.113-124
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to provide for the basic data useful to designing a scientific and systematic merchandising program for infants' wear brands. For this purpose, designer and MD working for 8 local infants' wear brands were surveyed to analyze the conditions of their designing and merchandising of infants' wears. The results of this study can be summarized as follows; 1. Only 3 brands employed MD for their merchandising departments. The average number of clothing designers employed by the subject brands was 3-5, while that of colorists was 1-2, and that of accessory designers was 2-3. On the other hand, the average number of patternmakers employed was about 1, while that of sewer was 4. 2. Many of the sample infants' wear brands tended to collect and analyze the information for merchandising, while most of them relied less on outside planned data. The information source upon which they relied most was 'local and foreign fashion magazine', followed by 'data surveyed by local and foreign department stores' and 'data surveyed for local fabric markets' in their order. Meanwhile, the main color represented 70-90% of the total colors, while the pastel groups accounted for 30-40% and vivid color groups for 40-50%. On the other hand, knit accounted for about 60% of their materials, while woven and sweater accounted for 30% and 10%, respectively. 3. In overall terms, most of brands felt that their brands were preferred as much as or less than their competitive brands, while consumers felt expensive for infants' wears. Namely, most consumers were dissatisfied with the price levels of infants' wears. On the other hand, consumers were found to favor the pastel color groups a little more, while being aware of each brand's sizes more or less precisely. 4. The medium upon which the infants' wear brands depended most for their advertisement was 'magazine', followed by 'radio' and 'catalogue' in their order. Most of them were analyzing the results of their sale turnover monthly or frequently in order to review their sales performances in comparison with their competitors. Most of brands bothered to program a sale strategy 4 times a year, primarily to dispose the stocks or find a breakthrough for their sales activities.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.83-91
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• 1999

The purpose of this study is to provide some useful references to the educational field in terms of providing on analysis of job characteristics of fashion designers working in the women's wear industries. The data were collected from 102 fashion designers working in women's wear industries through the questionnaire and were analyzed by SPSS packages of frequencies and percentiles for comparative study, and the results are as follows: 1. The demographic characteristics of the fashion designers are; unmarried (80.4%), working less than 2 years (20.2%), completion of junior college(68.6%), majority ages between 20-24 yrs(43.1%). An average length of working in one company war less than 6 months. 2. The ratio computer usage of the design room was approx. 52.0% especially in the management of sales (52.9%) and the ratio in fashion design was approx. 17.6% in merchandising planning. 3. 76.4% of respondents was working 10 hours a day, and 50% of them was dissatisfied on the job caused by excessive working hour (31.4%) and job over load (35.3%). In the developing fashion design with the relation of actual job, insufficient knowledges of the concerned technical and production fields (68.6%) were indicated as the most difficult area. In addition, fashion magazines were considered as the most helpful resource(94.1%). 4. It was noted that the target age groups for the brand were clearly divided into two groups, notably the early and middle of twenties and the early and middle forties. Among the produced items, formal wears were accounted for 52.9%. 5. As far as the contents of job are concerned, the fashion designers are mostly engaged in purchasing textile, collecting informations of fashion, quality control, whereas their actual job is apparel design. 6. The training that the fashion designer received beside formal education includes attendance of private institutes(62.7%), OJT(7.8%), seminars(4.9%). Regarding formal education, the respond indicated that they had least opportunity to received computer training. 7. The necessary subjects in the schools for the fashion designers in relation to the current job were fashion information, merchandising planning, pattern making, cutting, fashion marketing, knowledges of clothing material in sequence. Subjects which are necessary for the further development include pattern making(21.6%), fashion marketing(14.7%), and designing with computer(7.8%).

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2002

The need for ready-to-wear clothing increases as the problem comes to arise from the fit of custommade clothing due to the characteristics of middle-aged women's somatotype. At this point of time, a study on the realities of production of custom-made clothing in middle-aged women's clothing business firms is of very greatly significance. Therefore, this study was intended to identify the problem and improvements through the survey research of production of custom-made clothing in middle-aged women's clothing business firms and further present the plan for development of custom-made clothing business. The questionnaire was framed based on the contents extracted from the preliminary questionnaire research for the pattern section chief of each business firm. Collected data were statistically processed using the SPSS 10.0 Windows program. As a result, the following findings were obtained: 1. The target age of the middle-aged women's clothing business firms ranged from more than 45 years to less than 50 years of age. Clothing business firms much made inroads into the ready-to-wear clothing market largely in the 1980s and the 1990s. Their active entry into the custom-made clothing market occurred in the 1970s and the 1980s. 2. In terms of the clothing production method of middle-aged women's clothing firms, some private boutique and designer brand clothing firms entered the clothing market with a focus on custom-made clothing in the beginning of its organization and introduced the production method of ready-to-wear clothing in accordance with changes in production methods and consumers' needs and wants. National brand clothing firms manufactured clothing with a focus on ready-to-wear clothing from the beginning of its organization, but at last they manufactured both partial custom-made and whole custom-made as the problem arose from ready-to-wear clothing. Seeing that their clothing production showed the ratio readyto-wear to custom-made clothing of 2.58:1. And it was found that the manufacture of ready-to-wear and custom-made clothing took into consideration the great difference in the pattern, size and design plan. The research of the clothing production process showed that whole custom-made and partial custommade were distinguished according to whether or not the sample was presented. 3. The ready-to-wear pattern of middle-aged women's clothing firms were used with a focus on the 'patternmaker-developed pattern' and company-developed pattern'. Most clothing businesses produced clothing in 4 to 5 basic sizes, which is found to be insufficient to complement the physical characteristics of middle-aged women with many specific somatotypes. In the pattern of custom-made clothing, the 'pattern of ready-to-wear were applied' or the 'customized pattern was developed'. Actual measurements were most used as the size of custom-made, and accordingly it is predicted that the level of satisfaction is higher with the fit of custom-made clothing than that of ready-to-wear. The selling place and the head office showed the similar percent as the place for measuring the size of custom-made clothing. Size measurers were mostly the shop master. And it was found that most clothing business firms had a problem when the measured size was applied to the pattern. Accordingly, it is necessary to provide education on size measurement for shop masters. 4. It was found that in the middle-aged women's clothing firms, the pattern correction of the length of sleeve, jacket and slacks occupied the highest percent. Accordingly, it is necessary to provide for the size system to complement the accurate somatotype characteristics of middle-aged women. 5. In custom-made clothing customer management, most firms engaged in customer somatotype management through size management. They provided customers with commodity information by informing them of the sales and event period and practiced human management for customers by maintaining the get-together and friendly relationship. 6. Middle-aged women's clothing businesses responded that it would be necessary to improve the fit of custom-made clothing and complement their pursuit for individuality as the plan to improve its quality. In consequence, it suggests that middle-aged women's clothing businesses should provide middle-aged women with the clothing of better-suited size and refined design. Middle-aged women's clothing businesses responded that it was the most urgent task to form the custom-made clothing manufacturing team as the plan to expand the custom-made clothing market, which is identified as their emphasis on the systematized production of custom-made clothing.