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Hanin – Rethinking Garment Manufacturing

Hanin
Project Scope

Hanin is a family-owned garment manufacturing business in Hong Kong with over 40 years of apparel manufacturing experience.

Covid-19 has sent the retail industry and its supply chain partners on a downhill spiral. The trend of large scale retail outlet closures has driven a wedge into the once stable demand for Hanin’s manufacturing operations.

Hanin had the foresight to see that this declining demand was a ballooning threat to the company if it carried on with business as usual. Hanin was interested in exploring how technology could be introduced to morph its traditional manufacturing business into a modern one that is relevant for today’s environment.

Design Sojourn was engaged to help Hanin innovate and design a new service concept through analysing trends, business model innovation and service design.

The Manufacturing Conundrum - Make 1 or 1k or 100k?

As with most traditional manufacturing companies, Hanin’s factories were structured to compete in a high volume low cost game. However, the risk of relying solely on this supply-push model reared its ugly head during the pandemic.

This led us to the question – How might we create a situation where Hanin would be able to able to take and fulfil any order, regardless of whether it was an order for 1 piece, 1,000 pieces, or 100,000 pieces of clothing.

the innovation process

Adjacencies - Starting with the means, not the ends.

Rather than dreaming up an end outcome and racking our brains to find the means to make it happen, we utilised the concept of adjacencies to reverse the process. We started by analysing Hanin’s core competencies, tech stack, and available resources to consider some alternative areas and fields they could potentially compete in.

In addition, we compiled a list of macro industry trends and case studies to uncover potential innovation opportunities.

Design Principle - Uber, Tesla, or both?

Uber or Tesla

To tackle the manufacturing conundrum, we used the experience analogies of Uber and Tesla to help Hanin decide on a strategic design direction. The innovative solution could either take the form of a zero-asset platform like Uber, an end-to-end order to fulfilment solution like Tesla, or a combination of both business models.

As part of the project, Design Sojourn also facilitated several workshops to guide Hanin along the innovation journey. Through the co-creation process, we developed several design artefacts:

  • Personas to focus the design strategy on.

  • Service blueprint to chart out the service flow, infrastructure, and resources required for the new service concept.

  • Experience storyboards to flesh out and communicate the service experience.

  • Design Strategy with high-level roadmap to prioritise and implement the new service concept.

  • Design Brief containing a mock-up with broad UI/UX guidelines.
PROJECT OUTCOMES

Today, the Hanin has updated their strategy to look into Sustainable Manufacturing by moving away from the traditional supply chain; and through a Digital Supply Network. You may find out more at www.hanin.com.hk.

Status: Completed (4 June 2021)
 
Competence: Design Thinking Consulting, Business Model Innovation, Service Design

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