Mango Turns to Adaptable Clothing
The Spanish fashion retailer has turned to adaptable clothing as the effects of climate change take a toll on the seasonal nature of fashion. Recent Mango collections were designed to help customers adjust to the unpredictable swings in temperature, focusing on clothes that make the transition from cold to warm weather, or vice versa, as seamless and smoothly as possible. Temperatures in Europe have been progressively rising, and heavy rains have hit region at a higher-than-average rate, which have in turn changed the purchasing behavior of consumers.
The trench coat, for instance, has been singled out by Mango’s CEO, as seasonally transitional clothing. Furthermore, the Spanish brand has also started incorporating performance fabrics into their menswear lines in an effort to offer more breathable clothing in warmer days.
Mango’s flexible supply chain is a key part to this strategy. In recent years, Mango has shifted production of trend-sensitive items to Europe, whilst keeping manufacturing of core or functional items in Asia. At the end of last year, Mango had an estimate of 3,000 factories scattered across China, Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Nevertheless, whilst 60% of its vendors were located in Europe, 80% of its production was still made in Asia.
Furthermore, the usage of AI has aided Mango better track trends on social media and to cross-reference consumer data with other brands, as well as its own collections. In fact, Mango has its own AI tool, named Lisa, which helps train designers. So far, only 20 pieces have been created using AI, but it will certainly be used more prominently as the technology becomes more ubiquitous across industries.
Lisa is a conversational generative AI platform that not only supports the retailer’s design team, but also supports customer service operations.
It took nine months to create Lisa, and since then it has enabled Mango to make and evaluate successful designs.
Lisa is now consolidating over 15 different platforms into a single unified tool. Previously, the Spanish retailer developed Midas for pricing; Inspire for design and photography; and Iris for customer service. The latter handles more than 3.5 million requests every year.
Lisa is now consolidating all of these capabilities into a single, unified platform.
This strategy seems to be paying off. In 2023, sales hit the EUR 3 billion mark, a 15% increase YoY and added 130 new stores to its existing 2,700. Furthermore, profits doubled reaching EUR 172 million, and netter EUR 1 million in online sales. Behind Mango’s success there is a strategy to:
Differentiate the brand from ultra-fast fashion brands like Shein or Primark
Affordable prices
Investment in product innovation and trend analysis (as we saw by their bet on AI)
Approach to better environmental practices. In fact, Mago expects that by 2025, 100% of the polyester used will be recycled, 100% of cellulose fibers will be responsibly sourced and traceable, and 100% of cotton used will be more sustainable (whatever that means).
