A Chat with Pawan Gupta, CEO at AI-Driven B2B Fashion Marketplace: Fashinza

Fashinza is an AI-driven B2B marketplace for global fashion supply chains. Our mission is to make souring apparel and home furnishing an easier process for international brands – and in as fast as four weeks with low minimums.

Fashinza empowers small manufacturers to global brands by providing a transparent production process that can be monitored 24/7 with 100% control enabled by our revolutionary FactoryOS. Our goal is to create a sustainable (i.e. net positive) supply chain by 2030 and power SMB manufacturers with data and industry 4.0 solutions.

Fashinza has a roster of over 250 factories across Asia that serves 200+ brands in the United States, Canada, UK, Spain, UAE, and India. The company was co-founded in 2020 by myself alongside Abhishek Sharma, and Jamil Ahmad.
 
 
Fashinza – Elevation
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The current fashion supply chain was built for an entirely different era of low cost, mass production, and less personalization.

In a world where customers want higher personalization, customization, more options, and transparency – the supply chain needs to enable fragmentation instead of commoditization. The use of this outdated framework in today’s environment is causing the supply chain to suffer from slow speed, large minimum order quantities (MOQs), huge inventory wastages/liquidations, and zero transparency.

This is where Fashinza comes in. We’re unique because we’re working to address the use of obsolete practices being used to serve a highly demanding and global consumer base. A lot of attention today falls on marketing new styles and quickly but the focus really needs to be on producing these new styles. And in a sustainable way.

With our technology stack, manufacturers can offer brands smaller MOQs, the ability to experiment and introduce new styles or a limited selection with small quantities, reduce their liquidations by 80% and become more sustainable. Additionally, they can offer larger collections to their customers and most importantly offer transparency on where their goods are produced.
 

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Fashinza has grown significantly over the last few years but significantly in the past 12 months – by 10X.

Multiple factors have contributed to Fashinza’s growth and evolution. Most important has been our clear focus on solving key pain points for customers. We are not here to add a few % points of efficiency but instead to actually make our customers’, and their customers’, lives better.

As a result, so many of our customers relate to our mission and are working with us to build a fast and sustainable supply chain for the future. This has enabled us to retain customers and continuously increase our business with them.

On a macro level, disruptions in the global supply chain have forced companies to diversify their sourcing partners and offer more transparency. This in itself has provided Fashinza with multiple opportunities to quickly make space for ourselves within the Fashion manufacturing ecosystem.

Lastly, our traction amongst regional groups has contributed to our fast pace of growth.
 

What can we hope to see from Fashinza in the future?

 
The adoption of technology is quickly taking place within the fashion supply chain. There is a clear sign that those within the space are receptive to it and we’ve seen an extremely positive response towards our technological solutions.

As we grow, we plan to continuously invest in better but affordable technology solutions for SMB factories. This includes technology like IoT devices which will allow our partner factories to increase efficiency and speed.

In the background, we are also working on solving deadstock problems in the supply chain. We plan to do this by shifting manufacturer inventory online and helping redistribute it to the places where it is needed. This has the potential to solve massive sustainability challenges in the industry while bringing a significant benefit to everyone’s bottom line. “One person’s trash is another’s gold.”