The time-to-market gap: how the sell-in process is being rewritten
Alicia Hedtjärn
Brand & Growth, Lumoo
The fashion industry has a speed problem that nobody talks about openly. From the moment a design is finalised to the moment it reaches a buyer's screen, the timeline is measured in months, not weeks. And every week lost is a competitive disadvantage.
According to McKinsey's State of Fashion report, speed-to-market is now the single biggest operational priority for fashion executives globally. Yet most brands are still running a sell-in process designed for a slower era: physical samples shipped internationally, photoshoots booked months in advance, and marketing materials assembled manually after the fact.
The result is a gap. Between what a brand designs and what buyers actually see. Between the creative intent and the commercial presentation. That gap costs revenue, because products that aren't visualised properly don't get ordered. And it costs time, because every step in the traditional chain depends on the one before it.
Sketch to sale: the process compared
| Phase | Traditional | With Lumoo | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design | 4–6 weeks | 4–6 weeks | Unchanged |
| Sampling | 6–8 weeks | Skipped | AI visuals from sketches |
| Photography | 2–4 weeks | 2–3 days | Generated in bulk |
| Sell-in materials | 2–3 weeks | Same day | Ready at generation |
| Total to sell-in | 14–21 weeks | 6–9 weeks | Up to 12 weeks faster |
"The brands closing the time-to-market gap aren't moving faster through the old process. They're removing steps from it entirely."
Gant is one example. By generating product visuals from design files instead of waiting for physical samples, their team compressed the sell-in preparation timeline by weeks. The full collection was visualised and ready for buyers before competitors had their samples back from the factory.
This isn't about cutting corners. The visual quality matches or exceeds traditional photography, because the output is trained on the brand's own aesthetic. It's about removing the dependency chain that makes sell-in slow: samples, shipping, studio booking, post-production, layout.
When you remove those dependencies, something else changes too. The conversation between design, commercial, and marketing teams becomes faster and more iterative. A buyer asks to see a product in a different context. It takes minutes, not a reshoot. A colourway gets added late. It's visualised the same day.
The time-to-market gap isn't inevitable. It's a product of a process that was built for physical constraints. The brands that recognise this first will set the pace for everyone else.
See how brands are closing the gap from sketch to sale.
