Fashion-Strategizing Leadership in Sports

Abstract

Technology today plays a pivotal role in shaping societies, economies, and personal lives. The intersection of fashion and technology in the sports industry has led to innovations that enhance performance, safety, and style. The fashion industry as a vivid representation of the creative economy has limitless potential for meeting the major challenges of technological superiority in different industries. The sports industry has long been a championship of more than just a person’s talent, but also the right strategy application to ensure victory. Technology transfer can be an effective tool for cooperation between the fashion and sports industries. This article proposes a strategic model for the creation of a technology transfer center adapted to the needs of sports. The basis of strategic conceptualization has become the strategy theory and methodology of strategizing developed by Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Life-time), Dr. Sc. (Econ.) Vladimir L. Kvint and fashion-strategizing process methodology. The methods of induction and deduction, synthesis and analysis were used in the study. Further research could be devoted to assessing the effectiveness of such center. The practical significance of the study is related to the solution’s implementation possibility proposed by the author in science and technology policy.

1. Introduction

The creative economy development is now a major global trend. In essence, the worlds of sport and fashion constantly influence each other, with trends from one often migrating to the other, creating a dynamic and ever-evolving relationship. Sport and fashion have a long intertwined history. Brands often create exclusive clothing lines or accessories for major sporting events. Sports celebrities as fashion icons launch clothing lines or become the face of major fashion campaigns. Sportswear as a fashionable style is on the rise. The materials used in sportswear have influenced mainstream fashion due to their comfort and utility. Also, many sports brands collaborate with high-end designers or celebrities.

In an era of technological superiority, the issue of utilizing the industrial potential of the fashion industry to address the sports industry issues comes to the forefront.

2. The fashion industry complex

The fashion industry is a collection of enterprises engaged in the development, production, and sale of clothing, shoes, and various accessories. Unlike other production segments of the market, fashion industry enterprises have a close connection with the sociocultural aspect of the development of modern society, since the products of such enterprises emphasize the social status of consumers, their esthetic tastes and preferences, cultural differences, and many other social aspects of life. The fashion industry is one of the few branches of the modern economy that relies on the socio-value aspect of consumption, which should be understood as a set of ways and methods of self-expression (representation) of a person through the acquisition and use of specific categories of goods.

The fashion industry is a vivid example of creative economy development that is imbued with the individual talent imagination, design vision, as well as strict strategy development and implementation and strong economic concept. Through the years, various forms and methods of strategic and brand management have been created. This branch of economy is specific; it differs from the traditional ones by its peculiarities of functioning and attracting investments. Today, economic activity in this segment of the market is characterized by massiveness. It has all the properties of economic objects: product and regional diversification, mergers and acquisitions, large volumes of investment, complex production and technological process, and active participation in the stock market [1]. Fashion economy is a set of economic tools used in conjunction with creativity to create new forms and works, as well as to translate creative images and ideas into real products, form public opinion and demand for them, and organize advertising campaigns that promote their further purchase. In the modern world, fashion has become an object of commercial activity; it is involved in the market economy mechanism: a special economic mechanism of creation and implementation of new fashion concepts is developed, including the system of protection of creative ideas, pricing principles, organization of work of creative teams and their interaction, and sales commercial structures. There is no doubt that today, the place and role of this industry is increasing, overtaking other sectors of the economy. It is the industry that has a significant impact on the global textile and apparel industry. The largest national markets are in America, France, UK, and Germany. Entire faculties of such famous educational institutions such as The Central Saint Martins College, The London College of Fashion, The University for the Creative Arts, and The Sotheby’s Institute of Art are dedicated to this industry [1].

All of the aforementioned is a solid testament of the increasing role and importance of the fashion industry in the global economy. That is why the fashion industry has long been the research object of many scholars around the world.

The scientific discourse about the fashion industry is quite extensive. Thus, there is a lot of research on the etymological and philosophical side of the fashion industry [2, 3], about the cultural phenomenon [4] and social interactions of people through style [5, 6]. With the increasing complexity of economic processes, the emerging markets phenomenon occurrence [7], the business consolidation, the development of a marketing communications system [8], and approaches to long-term consumer attention retention, the scientific discourse about the fashion industry has moved into the plane of analyzing long-term competitive advantages. The issues of brand management [9] and other intangible assets began to play a vital role. The transformation of the economy toward the development of the ability to use the economic potential of a person’s creativity has led to the rapid creative economy establishment. The fashion industry has a wide range of influence on different levels—state policy in the field of solving national security, sectoral issues, or companies competitiveness due to the relevant and fashionable things provision.

Today, the fashion industry is inextricably responding to environmental challenges, which makes the ESG-agenda extremely relevant for further strategic development. Transformations also concern modern consumers—the ethical side comes to the prime focus. In this regard, many corporate players are revising their strategic documents in the direction of greening business processes. High-quality innovations as a source of solving the issues of reducing the external environment negative impact as well as industry superiority are becoming key success factors in highly competitive market.

The sports industry plays a significant role in society as it is a multibillion dollar industry, providing jobs, forming country image and reputation, driving tourism, and generating revenue for host cities. Sports has the ability to unite people from diverse backgrounds despite its excessive politicization in recent times. Global sporting events have an impact on the fashion industry companies’ strategy development. For example, the Olympic Games stimulate the marketing of a healthy lifestyle as well as the sale of sportswear, accessoriess and related products. The Olympic Games helps to build long-term relationships with customers of global brands through sponsorship relationships and thoughtful advertising campaigns that influence consumer loyalty, increasing brand awareness. The economic efficiency of sporting events plays an important role—it is important to make the right strategic decisions, because most sports organizations do not have the time or budget for a long search for solutions to problems and concentration of resources.

However, there is a lack of systematic research in the field of technology cooperation between fashion industry and the sport industry. This determined the purpose of this study.

3. Materials and methods

The rapid pace of globalization of the world economy has led in recent years to a sharp increase in competition in almost all industries and spheres of activity. Companies are constantly searching for new approaches to the formation of competitive advantages that can ensure stable socioeconomic development, taking into account the influencing factors of the external and internal environment and current and promising threats and opportunities.

Sectoral strategies are the potential for economic development. Business strategy allows you to respond in a timely manner to ongoing or expected changes, to identify the most successful combinations of resources to achieve strategic goals. The development and achievement of high results in sports and obtaining financial profit become impossible without the use of a strategic approach.

In the modern world, strategy is the basic tool for the stable and effective development of any economic system. The development of organizations in the sports and fashion industries should be based on a strategic approach, which is the result of a systematic analysis of the external and internal environment of the facility, the correct determination of competitive advantages and strategic priorities, and setting strategic goals.

The development of an effective strategy is impossible without the presence of a specific methodological apparatus, the use of which will minimize many types of risks, to choose the correct tactics taking into account the impact of external and internal factors and apply effective tools to adapt to changing market conditions.

This article applies the strategy theory and methodology of strategizing [10, 11] developed by Dr. Vladimir Kvint and fashion-strategizing process methodology [12]. Dr. Vladimir Kvint in his works offers a unique methodological model of strategizing, the main advantage of which is adaptation to any external conditions. Dr. Vladimir Kvint emphasizes that there is a certain relationship between forecasting, strategizing, and planning. Strategy development is impossible without an analysis of global, regional, and industry development trends, on the basis of which a long-term forecast is made, which later acts as a basic strategic document for defining the mission, vision, strategic goals, and objectives and their corresponding strategic priorities.

Despite the fact that the model includes a large number of individual stages, it allows to form all the necessary strategic documents of a fashion industry enterprise and determine key strategic priorities for the development of the enterprise, based on existing resource constraints and taking into account current opportunities and threats of the external environment.

At the first stage of the fashion-strategizing process methodology [1], fashion industry enterprises should conduct a thorough analysis of global and regional trends in the environmental field. Special attention at this stage should be paid to the study of industry reports, materials of industry experts, and up-to-date statistics of leading companies in the industry. This will allow to determine which areas of development in the medium and long-term will be the highest priority for the entire industry. Then, it will allow the company to correctly place emphasis points in the strategic priorities in the future. For the fashion industry, special attention should be paid to updating the used and promising sales channels, communication methods with the consumer audience, the possibility of organizing new supply chains of raw materials, and the development and implementation of innovative technologies that can positively affect both the optimization of production capacities and create the opportunity to reduce production costs, which ultimately will optimize the policy-selling prices and create a competitive price advantage.

Based on the analysis and the forecast, the fashion industry company can begin to develop the main strategic documents—the mission and strategic vision. The mission in accordance with the strategy theory of Dr. Vladimir Kvint is the general message of the company’s functioning in the market and, most importantly, what benefits the company brings to society. The mission is based on the individual and social values of a particular organization and emphasizes how the subject achieves a qualitative improvement in life.

Strategic vision is philosophy and ideology. It is a system of strategic priorities and ensuring their implementation of the competitive advantages of a particular organization operating in a competitive environment. Examples of such competitive advantages in the industry can be the following:

• Access to unique technologies for processing raw materials and materials;

• High level of brand awareness;

• Financial stability;

• Flexible organizational structure;

• Competitive creative potential of human resources, and so forth.

The effective use of these advantages through the prism of formulated strategic priorities allows successful fashion industry enterprises to achieve success both in a stable market condition and in emergency periods. Over the past few years, the fashion industry has become one of the most dynamically developing industries, which is based on a combination of elements of the creative economy, technological, and digital achievements.

Leadership as one of the management system main elements plays a crucial role in long-term development. According to Dr. Vladimir Kvint, the methodology identifies five main elements necessary for the strategic management system formation: strategic leadership; organizational structure senior management, managers and administrative staff; strategic decision-making process; management tools, infrastructure and strategic information technology. Strategic leaders with strategic thinking question old views and established paradigms, encourage the creation of new perspectives and ways of action, and are always in a new ideas search and strategic opportunities monitoring. This kind of leaders who are able to develop and implement a strategy of fundamentally new forefront opportunities that will increase the commercial efficiency of services and investment projects. Modern leaders nowadays are focused on the technological sovereignty establishment.

4. Technological leadership

The new era is characterized by a significant acceleration of goods, services, and new emerging markets life cycles. At the same time, in essence, the only way for businesses to “keep up” with the market is to accelerate the new markets development and the new products and services launch. Technology transfer allows long-term development of intellectual potential and scientific reserve of subjects of economic activity [13]. That is why in the fashion industry, technology transfer is playing an increasingly prominent role in terms of competitiveness strengthening. In the context of changing geopolitical reality as well as new challenges the role of new technological solutions, innovative projects and ideas are increasing. All subjects of economic activity are interested in innovations as they are long-term competitive advantages that open unlimited strategic opportunities. Large industrial companies build their strategic leadership on the advanced technological base, while small and medium-sized businesses automate production and increase the maturity of their business processes.

For example, many companies adapt technological solutions based on the use of AR/VR technologies, which create the opportunity to introduce digital fitting rooms with augmented reality, where the consumer, by combining their own photos and digital clothing models, can try on. Other manufacturers are introducing innovative digital tools for self-designing clothes, which creates a personalized approach to customer service. The issues of using advanced technologies in the fashion industry have been discussed in the scientific community for many years. So, for example, the work of Chinese researchers notes that technological innovations, including in the field of technologies for creating new materials, can be used to create clothes and shoes in demand by consumers [14]. The most important opportunity for the production and marketing enterprises of the fashion industry in emerging markets is currently the active introduction of various digital technologies that reduce production costs and provide additional coverage to the consumer buyer audience.

The modern sport is an absolute high-achievement industry, where the natural athletes’ talents, the infrastructure maturity, the pharmaceutical industry benefits, the management approaches combination, and long-run motivation tools come together. Tailored suit with specific characteristics can provide better sliding performance and better air permeability—it all affects the end result in sport. For example, for companies producing apparel and related equipment, the Olympics Games are often a technological challenge. SPEEDO’s LZR Racer swimsuits are believed to have had a positive impact on athletic performance—98% of the medals at the Olympics were won by athletes wearing the LZR suit, including renowned swimmer Michael Phelps. The swimsuit, developed in conjunction with NASA, consists of extremely lightweight LZR Pulse fabric that is ultrasonically welded together. NASA estimates that the ultrasonic seam welding process helped reduce drag by 6% [15].

5. Strategizing process of a fashion technology center for sports industries necessity

Stimulating industrial prosperity requires remodeling and implementing new cooperative chains to grow a new national market and satisfy consumer preferences.

The specialized center may be created to solve technological problems for creating excellence in athlete outfitting by light industry and fashion industry enterprises. The domestic light industry and fashion industry can create such a fashion technology center (FTC).

The FTC mission is to commercialize and promote light industry and fashion industry developments for the sports field as well as to create a unified environment for technology transfer and cooperation facilitation.

The strategic key functions of such a FTC could be:

• Formation of a consortium of organizations holding technologies or research innovation projects for sports industry;

• Building a standardized project management system for all members of the consortium focused on technology transfer for sports industry;

• Creation of high-quality and accessible services to facilitate the entry of domestic technologies into the market;

• Development of a system of interaction between the stakeholders to meet the interests.

According to the aforementioned methodology, hereinafter strategic priorities are presented linked with relevant strategic goals system (Table 1).

Strategic priority 1	Creation of a fashion technology center	Goal 1; Formation of the FTC structure; Goal 2; Formation of a strategic brand
Strategic priority 2	Creation of a digital platform for sectoral knowledge and experience transfer	Goal 1; Creation of a digital platform; Goal 2; Formation of the platform’s strategic brand; Goal 3; Control and monitoring of the digital platform development
Strategic priority 3	Creating a pool of strategic labor resources	Goal 1; Organization of a talent recruitment system; Goal 2; Organization of long-run motivation system

Table 1.

The FTC strategic priorities system.

Given the strategic trend of digitalization and its impact on management decision support tools, an industry-specific digital platform is required. Digital platform as a decision support system can establish continuous knowledge transfer.

A new type of employees should be formed; basic skills and competencies should be revised. An industry professional in the fashion industry, engaged in fashion and light industry strategizing, fashion strategist, should understand the mechanisms of technology and innovation transfer in sports.

6. Conclusion

Fashion strategy as a basis for long-term development of light industry and fashion enterprises opens new horizons of activity, enhances the synergetic effect of all factors of production, and emphasizes the DNA of cultural and creative industries—unique intangible assets expressed in creativity. Successful entrepreneurship in this sphere requires the ability to adapt commercial products to the interests and values of the target audience, to identify strategic trends and patterns, and to increase or create your competitive advantages. The results of intellectual activity as intangible assets play a significant role in the formation of additional sources of income for companies.

The fashion industry can help address the challenges of athlete excellence by creating unique technological apparel items. One of the key solutions for the fashion and sports industries to cooperate could be the creation of a unique technology transfer center.