Fashion Business Management MA

The fashion business dynamics and its fast-shifting product sourcing require an adaptable attitude to spot business opportunities emerging around the world. Building profitable relationships with partners and suppliers and balancing costs and risks are key challenges. To transform an idea into a commercial product involves a complex route: this module is designed to provide you with an overall understanding of how to manage a fashion business from concept to customer. It will explore a variety of perspectives on global product sourcing and global supply chain issues with the aim of preparing you for the challenges of developing and maximising a strategy whilst still responding efficiently and effectively to constant changes in consumer demand.

This module will provide students with an insider view on the key roles of a Fashion Buyer and Fashion merchandiser. The digital transformation of fashion retail has created intense competition and fashion retailers need to devise the perfect cross-channel experience for their customer that takes advantage of digitalisation to provide targeted, commercial fashion product applying relevant trends to retail strategy maximising sales and KPIs and minimising risk.

The module covers the theories, models, tools and methodologies used in the field of strategic management specifically within the fashion business. It aims to enhance your ability to play an effective role in developing, implementing and monitoring strategy within a business in the fashion or fashion-related industries. The module especially aims to help you develop a critical awareness of the management of creativity and design within a global context. Fashion enterprises at every level inherently enjoy advantages as well as face the vulnerabilities of the market conditions. This unit opens windows into strategic and creative thinking, analytical evaluation, and business strategy development as well as the decision-making process. The business environment is constantly changing and this affects the market condition, business structure, strategy and style.

With the competition in the fashion business at its fiercest, it is imperative that companies understand and develop successful and effective marketing strategies for product development and brands for the mass market as well as the luxury goods market. This module will stimulate critical and intellectual skills and allow you to explore the challenges of developing fashion marketing strategy, to include an understanding of the fashion market, the marketing mix, the consumer, how to make appropriate product adaptations to meet consumer demands, developing strategy to protect and ensure effective intellectual property protection for a brand. The module also aims to help you effectively develop and overcome challenges in the marketing environment in order to successfully understand how to penetrate new markets and manage brands in order to balance a competitive advantage with profitability in the fashion business.

This module will include:

• an understanding of the global fashion market
• the global marketing mix
• the consumer
• how to make appropriate product adaptations to meet consumer demands
• developing the strategies to protect and ensure effective intellectual property protection for a brand
• ensuring and effectively developing and overcoming the challenges to successfully understand how to penetrate the market in order to balance a competitive advantage with profitability in the global fashion market

The module combines theory and practical knowledge of finance in the fashion industry. It also provides a practical, real-world approach that presents the common financial problems (and solutions) entrepreneurs often face especially in the fashion world. With the increasingly critical role played by finance and financial management in the success of global business, a solid grounding in the principles and techniques of finance is essential for a successful business venture. The module is designed to develop your understanding of the core financial aspects of business as well as entrepreneurship through the preparation, interpretation, use and analysis of strategic financial information in the context of an understanding of the strategic need for the survival of global business. This module represents a mixture of financial and management accounting, corporate finance and risk management. The principles and concepts underlying each of these subject areas are examined with particular emphasis being placed upon their practical application in the international fashion industry.

This module blends two important and connected areas of creative teams working in the fashion business, managing creativity via innovation and trend forecasting. This is blended to demonstrate how creative teams working effectively can create commercially viable opportunities in the fashion business. It will provide students with a grounding in the theory and practice of the management of creative people, and trends at both strategic and operational levels.

The Fashion Business Project builds on the skills and experience derived from the previous modules. You will be provided with the opportunity to apply all of the knowledge gained during the programme into a major project to address fashion business issues and challenges while adding to the body of professional practice and theoretical literature. Supervised by a faculty member in collaboration with yourself and a potential fashion industry representative, the Fashion Business Management Project is recognised by graduates as one of the most rewarding and empowering experiences of the entire programme.