Mass Market Fashion: An Overview

Shubham Anil Jain
Sr. Consultant
Cent Edge Solutions LLP, Bangalore, India
Email: shubhamajain125@gmail.com

Introduction:
A sector of the fashion business that occupies a prominent position at the top of the pyramid is the mass market. To reach as many people as possible is the aim of the mass market. Mass-market fashion companies offer fashionable things at reasonable prices to accomplish this. Most often, luxury labels serve as inspiration for these brands. But for the typical consumer, they create affordable and perfect ensembles. The common consumer may easily stay in style without paying a lot of money thanks to mass market fashion. The only drawback to mass production is that the products are frequently of lower quality.

History of Mass Market Fashion:
Without mass production, a mass market is not feasible, which is how sewing machines came to be. The creation of the sewing machine was a very slow-moving creative process that took a very long period. Over 20 million sewing machines were created annually from manufacturers throughout the world by the year 1900. The simple sewing machine was the only invention that people around the world embraced with such fervour.

Mass production of clothing started in the middle of the nineteenth century when some manufacturers started making clothes that didn’t need to be fitted, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that fashion emerged as a legitimate industry in the institutional sense of the word.

The quick transition from mass-produced ready-made clothing to custom-made clothing during the industrial revolution was sparked by the rise of the middle class and a significant increase of foreign workforce, primarily Jewish and Italian Immigrants who acquired their alterations skills in Europe.

By 1915, after steel and oil, clothing was America’s third-largest industry after those two. Large factories and mills produced overcoats, peticoats, shirts, trousers, gloves, caps, and footwear in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The department store pioneered the concept of assembling a sizable quantity of mass-produced items for general consumption in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Top Fashion Brands for the Mass Market:
In the mass market fashion area, there are several important players. The majority of these enterprises outsources their clothing production and serves as both merchants and manufacturers. We’ll look at the top mass-market brands in the following sections.

1. H&M:
H&M is another prominent mass-market apparel company known for its low prices. As a result, the company is now one of the world’s biggest fashion shops. H&M began in Sweden and now has stores in 74 countries. According to statistics, H&M manufactures over three billion fashion items per year, making it a massive mass-market enterprise.

2. Uniqlo:
This Japanese brand is yet another mass-market brand that cannot be overlooked. Uniqlo, on the other hand, uses higher-quality materials than other mass-production firms. Fast Retailing, the world’s second-largest apparel retailer, owns the brand, which was launched in 1959. Uniqlo focuses on quality rather than trends. As a result, while the brand engages in mass production, they prioritize comfort and quality. The purpose is to provide simple and modern apparel to the typical individual.

3. Mango:
This fashion label was started in 1984 and was one of the first to launch a website. The firm is also notorious for using celebrities, particularly movie stars, to market itself. Mango brand creates 18,000 designs every year, with several thousand produced for each design. Mango is well-known for introducing new collections at low pricing for the mass market. One of the issues with this firm is the poor quality of its apparel.

4. Zara:
Zara must be mentioned while discussing mass-market clothes. Inditex’s flagship brand is known for rapid fashion, which is impossible without mass-market manufacture. This organization is a great example of how to properly manage a mass-market brand. This company’s business approach is to stock its stores with so many things that the customer has an infinite number of selections.

5. Nova Fashion:
This is an online fashion brand that seamlessly portrays the fashion world’s evolution. This brand readily practices mass-market and releases 600 – 900 patterns every week. People desire to acquire and wear more because of the rapidity with which fashion items are released. The brand is well-known for promoting itself through celebrities and influencers. Despite the employment of celebrities, Fashion Nova’s focus is on the general public.

Mass Market Theory:
The mass-market theory, often known as the trickle across, is a social fashion behavioural marketing technique developed by Dwight E. Robinson and Charles W. King in 1958 and 1963, respectively. The definition of mass market is “a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and appeal to the entire market with a single offer or strategy.” The mechanism focuses on the fashion innovators found in each social economic group, as well as the influences in reaction to the couture fans that create as part of their fashionable element.

In contrast to the trickle-down impact of fashion innovation, this idea contends that fashion spreads across socioeconomic groupings rather than from upper to lower strata. Fashion innovation is not limited to the higher class; it can originate from inventors from all socioeconomic groups. As a result, this is known as the trickle across theory. The theory’s origins can be traced back to new fashion adoption influences simultaneously by diverse social economic groupings and are contained within the distinct groups.

Conclusion:
The advantages of mass market fashion are obvious; it boosts consumer pleasure since consumers can quickly get in on a trend. Moreover, mass-market fashion gives the typical consumer access to stylish clothing at a reasonable cost. Even while fast fashion has drawbacks like contributing to climate change and producing a lot of waste, the majority of mass-market firms are making a lot of effort to go in the direction of sustainability. The question of whether the drawbacks of mass-produced clothing outweigh their benefits is one that will never go away.

References:

https://440industries.com/mass-market-fashion-history-brand-examples/
Mass Marketing”. 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012. “Business Dictionary
George B. Sproles. (1974). Fashion Theory: A Conceptual Framework.
Fashion History: Mass Market, Namanpal Singh, Sep 25, 2017 https://medium.com/@namanpalsingh/fashion-history-mass-market-4698bea668b5

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Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. He is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.