When I started my business almost twenty years ago, the fashion industry worked in a very different way.

The fashion world was pre-everything as we know it today. Pre-internet. Pre-social media. Pre-fast-fashion. 

The rhythm of the industry was clear and widely shared. Everything revolved around seasons. Trade shows were central. You prepared for them for months, showed your collection, met buyers, took orders. That’s where most of the business happened.

Participation in the trade shows was part of the playbook. It was the system in fact.

Within that system, we executed well. We knew what to do. We were organised. 

But then things started to shift.

The internet changed how brands were discovered. Production timelines compressed. New players entered with different rules, different speeds, different cost structures. Communication, distribution, and expectations all evolved.

None of this happened overnight.

It happened gradually, right in front of us.

But we were busy.

We kept doing what had worked before. Preparing collections. Attending trade shows. Following the same calendar. Repeating the same cycle.

Not because we were not able to adapt.

But because we were too busy to notice this important shift.

Trade shows were expensive. Energy-intensive. Logistically heavy. We moved from one deadline to the next, one season to the next. There was always something urgent to execute.

Nothing looked clearly broken.

Sales still happened. Orders still came in. But fewer and for smaller quantities.

Effort increased. We were exhausted

We were busy and increasingly ineffective.

Friction started to pop up everywhere

Looking back, the problem wasn’t that we executed poorly.

It was that confusion had quietly settled in.

The rules of the industry were changing, but we were still operating as if everyone shared the same assumptions: about timing, distribution, visibility, and how value was created.

That confusion showed up everywhere.

Extra work to adjust orders at the last minute.

Misaligned expectations with buyers.

Collections designed for channels that no longer performed the same way.

Decisions revisited again and again.

Nothing dramatic failed.

How confusion creates … waste

When things become unclear, people don’t stop working.

They keep doing what has worked before.

They follow the same rhythms.

They repeat the same processes.

The direction is shared.

But the environment has changed.

So effort stays aligned but it is just no longer aligned with reality.

Work continues. Execution remains disciplined.

But returns slowly erode.

More energy is required to achieve the same result.

Adjustments happen too late.

Corrections become expensive.

Bad execution is easy to spot.

This is harder to see. Because nothing looks broken.

Yet the business keeps paying a growing cost for doing the right things in the wrong context.

That’s how confusion creates waste. Quietly, over time.

Clarity reduces wasted time and energy

Relief came when we stopped trying to execute harder and started questioning what we were actually optimising for.

Clarity was not about simplifying the work.

It was about aligning effort with reality.

Once things became clearer about which channels mattered, which rhythms no longer made sense, what the business was actually built to support, a lot of waste disappeared.

Not because people worked more.

But because they stopped working against invisible friction.

Clarity didn’t make us smarter or faster.

It removed what was slowing us down.

When confusion is the culprit

When confusion isn’t addressed, the business stays busy but pays a quiet cost.

Effort increases while returns slowly erode.

People compensate with energy where structure is missing.

When clarity is chosen deliberately, something shifts.

Work still happens, but it aligns sooner.

Decisions last longer.

Energy moves from correcting to building.

The business starts to carry itself more cleanly.

A small step forward

If you want one simple place to pause, ask yourself:

Where does confusion show up most often in your business?

Not to fix it yet. Just to notice where effort keeps leaking.

That’s usually where clarity would save the most.