In October’s blog, we highlighted that there seems to be a shortage of fashion technologists ready, able and willing to move to new roles. We know this is for multiple complex reasons such as the global economy, the freeze on UK salaries alongside the cost of living crisis, the shift back to on-site working, higher travel costs, and the ripple effects of Brexit and political un-certainty in the UK.
It’s been a year of flux in the fashion manufacturing industry and the nature of many roles have had to evolve to meet the needs of the new manufactur-ing legislation. There’s a growing trend in our industry, and we’ve noticed it across other sectors too, not just fashion and manufacturing, where addi-tional skills are needed for manufacturing roles so the new ‘ask’ can span several different skill sets within one job. This is most noticeable in the mate-rials, textiles, packaging, consumer goods and sourcing sectors. This will in-fluence the future training and development of graduate skills and will inevi-tably put additional pressure on universities and colleges to enable their students to develop broader skillsets and acquire additional technical skills such as CAD.
In the fashion manufacturing sector, there is also an ever snowballing amount of regulation to address, both EU and global. EPR requires a great-er amount of administration to manage. It can be challenging to apply the various frameworks without broad experience in the industry. On the plus side, these can represent great opportunities for less experienced candi-dates to grow and develop new skill sets.
Suppliers have obligations to ensure goods are produced responsibly and do not contain harmful chemicals, so sourcing roles are becoming more technical and knowledge of chemical compliance has become more perti-nent. Specialist roles have become more generalist in nature as job specs have had to stretch to meet these new needs.
Currently, a textile product developer / technologist / buyer role is likely to also be required to have some knowledge of chemical compliance and raw material production. Small to medium size businesses often don’t have a chemical compliance specialist to support this work.
Kate Berry, QHQ Director says: “It’s important to be aware of the time it takes to manage these regulations within existing team structures and the pressure that can add to a role. Sustainability has become an essential skill and has almost become a requirement of every role as brands navigate their way around the complex evolving frameworks.”
Supply chain mapping and digital passports are becoming essential re-quirements for brands to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and comply with the upcoming EU product transparency legislation. These can represent full-time roles for larger businesses and retailers.
Sally Blaxall, QHQ Director: “There is a shift towards broader job specs with-in the industry and we will inevitably see a whole new sector emerging to support these requirements as time goes on. The best advice we can give is keep developing your skill set and if you have the chance to learn additional skills, even those outside of your traditional area, we recommended to take the opportunity. AI will inevitably have an increasing presence - if you can recommend an AI course for garment techs, we’d be interested to hear about that.”
Please get in touch if you are looking for a move or need some advice on progressing your technologist career. There are lots of opportunities availa-ble, it’s now more about creating the right pathway and talking to the right people alongside developing skills.