New Look's Resource Base - Including Its Tangible and Intangible Resources

Nowadays, the global fashion apparel industry is one of the most important sectors of the economy in terms of investment, revenue, trade, and employment generation all over the world (Fashion Products, 2009). According to, apparel production is one of Spain's leading industries and rank in the fifth largest apparel industry in European Union (EU). (Datamonitor, 2009)

New Look Retailer Ltd. is one of Britain's most recognized apparel brands in the past 40 years, has decided to enter the Spanish apparel market, in addition to internationally expansion. The aim of this report is to analyse and evaluate the New Look's resource base, networks, and relationships, and also Spanish apparel market and industry.

The report is divided into three main sections. The first section will analyse and evaluate New Look's existing resource base, networks, and relationships. Second will do a Spanish apparel market, then third will give a conclusion based on the analysis and evaluation.

1. New Look's resource base, including its tangible and intangible resources

An organization might want to develop resource-based view, in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage (Henry, 2008).

The following table shows the number of stores of New Look in U.K.;

Year '07 '08 '09

Stores 553 569 586

Spaces (k) 2,628 3,133 3,485

Figure 1 - Number of stores of New Look in U.K.

(Source: Annual Report & Accounts 2008, Markerpost Limited Annual Report 2009)

Trading space (Store)

New Look continually increasing the number of stores not only in U.K. but also in other countries (e.g. Ireland, France, and Dubai), which can expand their brand globally. Moreover, they move their buying, merchandising, design, and marketing departments to London, one of the world's major fashion centres let they gain the available talent pools.

Warehouse & Distribution

New Look has opened the new distribution centres in Lymedale (U.K.), Singapore, and Istanbul, which can achieve fast-moving business to reduce lead time, improve speed to market, and substantial cost saving, especially satisfy the customer to gain customer loyalty which can lead to customer loyalty and long-term successful.

E-Commerce

According to Internet population report (Erick, 2009) "Almost 22% of the world's population has internet access." New Look was extremely successful since they opened the website because it obviously give customers the chance to buy anytime and anywhere (24/7). In the same way, New Look also can learn customer's behaviours from their purchases. This trend can be more easily observe in the following graph.

Employees

New Look try to develop their employee to be "integrity, unity, ambition, and fun", also has reward management for giving the incentive to motivate them to work well, and they always train their employees to have same high standard. On the other hand, knowledge skills of employees also can be an intangible resource (Henry, 2008) because it is difficult for competitors to imitate.

Brand, Goodwill, Software license

From the annual report (Markerpost, 2009), New Look's brand is a leading international fashion value brand, with a significant presence outside the UK, and has great fashion at prices everyone can afford. New look also has the most aspiration women's titles goodwill and website license, including social network.

It can be argued that New Look has improved their resource-based in the previous year and if they keep developing it can enable firm to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage which can lead to long term successful in this industry (Henry, 2008).

2. New Look's overall business network, including its supply network and distribution network

Figure 3 - Supply Chain Management (Adapted from: Slack, Chambers & Johnston 2004)

"Good SCM can improve customer value and satisfaction to achieve profitability and differential advantage." (John, 2001)

From the above Supply Chain Management model, it is assumed that the suppliers in the supply side can be manufacturers and suppliers that collaborate with New Look, for demand side the products will distribute through the distributors (e.g. Singapore, Istanbul) to the outlets then sell to the final customers.

New Look can develop strategic partnerships with suppliers, distributors, and customers for creating communication channels for critical information and operational improvements to achieve competitive advantage (Mentzer et al., 2001).

Furthermore, it is often argued that global supply chain management is the integration of key business processes across the supply chain for the purpose of adding value for customers and stakeholders (Lambert, 2008).

3. New Look's supply-side relationships and collaborations

From the above figure 4, for supply-side New Look collaborate with many manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, wholesalers, and retailers. For instance, they continue to focus on product lead times and have built on the strength of setting up New Look Singapore (supplier relationship) in 2007, which is currently implementing a consolidation hub (Markerpost, 2008).

It can be argued that New Look achieve cost savings and time involved in moving product from the Far East to franchise operation in the Middle East, also hub in Turkey, Istanbul.

4. New Look's demand-side relationships and collaborations

"Horizontal linkages between firms at all levels in a value chain can reduce transaction costs, create economies of scale, and contribute to the increased efficiency and competitiveness of an industry." (Campbell, 2008)

As mentioned in the previous section, for demand-side New Look trades in the Middle East via its franchisee, Landmark, a Dubai-based fashion and lifestyle retail group. In