The Global Supply Chain and Distribution unit explores vertical integration, alternative supply chain strategies, their impact on critical paths and delivery to market, as well as alternatives distribution routes, their costs and benefits and the emergence of e-retailing, ethical issues and sustainability. The development of multiple new routes to market such as the emergence of e-retailing has created new levels of complexity in supply chain management that require the simultaneous application of analytical thinking and the delivery of creative solutions. The unit therefore is fundamentally concerned with flow of product covering on the one hand sourcing and on the other delivery of product to customers, enabling you to evaluate business problems and opportunities arising from buying and merchandising activity across the fashion retailing sector.

Organisations and brands frequently need to be refreshed and repositioned as the global competitive environment changes around them. The Socio-cultural, Organisational and Economic Context of Fashion unit aims to analyse the various contexts in which fashion product and services are produced, marketed, distributed and consumed. These contexts influence decisions, strategies and procedures within the business and thus demonstrate the importance of contextual environmental factors on the business itself, as well as explore the definition of fashion as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Considering these as a whole the unit will provide tools and perspectives available to organize analysis, identify strategic challenges and begin designing an organisational response. Even though internationalisation is now considered an unarguable characteristic of the fashion industry, cultural and legal diversities that exist at country level can have significant repercussions on actual performance, whilst advances in technology have the power to cause dramatic shifts affecting the fashion industry at a global level. The unit will engage with these issues through the use of case studies and input from key speakers and you will be encouraged to apply your understanding of these issues to business problems.