industry

The shortage of crucial medical supplies, especially personal protective equipment, has crippled the United States’ ability to quell the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 54,000 nursing home residents and workers have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. as of June 26. This is a staggering number when compared to nursing homes in Hong Kong, which have reported zero deaths despite cramped quarters. Other countries with ample PPE, such as South Korea and New Zealand, have reported few deaths in nursing homes. The shortage of PPE in the United States has gone on for months and is expected to exacerbate in a second wave of COVID-19 pandemic, due to structural issues in the U.S. medical supply chain. As an operations management scholar whose research has touched upon health care supply chains, I have be...

A massive force is reshaping the fashion industry: secondhand clothing. According to a new report, the U.S. secondhand clothing market is projected to more than triple in value in the next 10 years – from US$28 billion in 2019 to US$80 billion in 2029 – in a U.S. market currently worth $379 billion. In 2019, secondhand clothing expanded 21 times faster than conventional apparel retail did. Even more transformative is secondhand clothing’s potential to dramatically alter the prominence of fast fashion – a business model characterized by cheap and disposable clothing that emerged in the early 2000s, epitomized by brands like H&M and Zara. Fast fashion grew exponentially over the next two decades, significantly altering the fashion landscape by producing more clothing, distributing it fa...

Tag: industry

What US medical supply chain can learn from the fashion industry

Sustainability Crisis In The Fashion Industry May Be Solved By The Boom In Secondhand Clothing Sales