Fashion Marketing and Quality First

As the headlines of big news from the world’s leading media, Lee Kun-hee, Samsung Chairman who transformed the small television maker into a global giant of consumer electronics, left us at the age of 78.

  According to “Samsung Electronics and the Struggle for Leadership of the Electronics Industry,” a 2010 book on the company by Tony Michell, the Gumi factory’s 2,000 workers gathered in a courtyard and were made to wear headbands labeled “Quality First.” Mr. Lee and his board of directors sat under a banner that read “Quality Is My Pride.” +

The New York Times continued to introduce the realistic report in this book. “Together they watched as $50 million worth of phones, fax machines and other inventory was smashed to bits and set ablaze. The employees wept.”

In the next 10 years, the company has been reborn as a world-class company. It is true that it was due to the management strategy of ‘Quality First’ that Chairman Lee pursued.

Many merchants in Dongdaemun market have also been directly or indirectly influenced by Samsung’s management strategy. Many domestic and foreign fashion retailers and buyers, however, have thought that Dongdaemun fashion products are fast and inexpensive, but their quality is not very good.

Some Dongdaemun market merchants sometimes conducted unethical commerce by importing poorly imported products or selling fake Dongdaemun fashion products. Fortunately, the Dongdaemun Fashion Town Tourism Zone Council has begun helping many overseas buyers to purchase high quality fashion products with confidence through the certification mark system for genuine Dongdaemun fashion products.

Meanwhile, SeoulClick, one of the export agencies in Dongdaemun market, has been conducting fashion marketing based on quality inspection of product and its management for a long time, taking ‘Quality first’ as its management philosophy. They are right because even the best clothes can have minor scratches. Thanks to that, many overseas buyers believe in the company’s ethical management and continue to trade as a customer.

Even in the midst of the global economic crisis, where the sky and sea roads are blocked these days, the company’s export volume of Dongdaemun fashion products has not decreased significantly.


 

-SeoulClick CEO and Inspection Center Workers are busy despite COVID-19 Pandemic-


Considering the remarkable business performance achieved by quality-first management pursued by Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, this is not surprising.

Needless to say, the strategic factor in fashion marketing is whether product sold fits the trend, but also maintains its quality. Here, Quality means customer needs is to be satisfied. Quality is also an attribute, a property, a special feature or characteristic or a manner, a style. 

The quality management, therefore, is the application of skill or care in the manipulation, use, treatment, and control of things or persons, etc. A fashion legend, Hubert De Givenchy, seems to have recognized the quality management of fashion products as an important and necessary strategic tool.

“To have style is to have feeling for what is currently fashionable, and still to simultaneously remain true to oneself.” ++

Another legend Thom Browne also said that it is so important to be really true to yourself in design and I am. 

In any market, when merchants face business difficulties, there are cases in which they impatiently cheat on the quality of products to sell. Such an error undid all their efforts. Everyone should not forget the proverb “What is done cannot be undone.” Koreans often say this.

“When in a hurry, take the long way around.”

No matter how difficult it may be, everyone needs the courage to take a long way around, slowly and safely, without rushing to satisfy the needs of customers. Even when it is late, loyal customers will wait.

It is also a long way to sustainable management, the destination of all merchants. It may not be easy to accept at first glance, but fashion marketing should prioritize quality over speed.

+ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/..

++ The Lives of 50 Fashion Legends, Fashionary, 2018, p.45, P. 115.

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Bong Sul (Advisor, SeoulClick)

 Read more: Bong (Bong Sik) Sul, Dongdaemun Style, ebook.kstudy.com, Seoul, 2019.


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