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Developing New Skills for the Extroversion Specializations of Fashion Industry in Europe
Start date: Oct 1, 2015, End date: Mar 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Over the years, fashion industries have played and continue to play key role in the competitiveness of the European economy. With almost 850 000 companies, 5 million jobs, and another 3 million jobs to be found throughout the supply chain, the Fashion industry can contribute to further economic growth and a strengthening of the competitive position of the EU economy as a whole. Due to pressures for change resulting notably from trade liberalization and increasing external competition, consumer developments, technological advances, changes in production costs and environmental issues, the fashion industries are characterized by continuing restructuring and modernization. This change indeed requires a more qualified workforce to deal with new technologies, stimulate innovation, ensure quality management and develop international strategies and marketing. Therefore, the availability of adequately skilled workers has become one of the major issues for the fashion industries. Fashion industries faced the shortage of trained and qualified personnel for their export and fashion marketing departments. Recognizing their critical role, recent European efforts, such as the European Skills Council of Textile Clothing Leather & Footwear and the European Fashion Industries Alliance, have come together in order to strengthen the comparative advantages of the fashion industries which include, among others, the well-educated and high-skilled professional workforce of the industry. Other factors include the rapid advance of digital technologies, the globalisation of networks and the deregulation of media. Employees from the fashion industries, students and SME’s, who would like to succeed, have to adapt to globalised market and ICT-based vocational education and training. Therefore a precise and effective ICT training tool for development, enhancement and boost of their transversal skills, is inevitably demanding. Fashion industries also need a flexible workforce that can respond to the development and the globalized market and the trend and need for internationalization. The workforce needs to be well qualified and ready to face the increased competition and rapid technological changes. To be compete in the global market fashion industries have to be smarter and able to adapt to changes. To achieve this, fashion industries need new education and training systems and tools for their existing and potential workforce in order to respond to the demands of the labour market and the global competition. In a framework of global competition, innovation and development are crucial elements to provide fresh impetus to a sustainable and competitive industry. In this context, the proposed project aims to design and develop an innovative and comprehensive training protocol for export personnel of fashion industries, using ICT-based learning approaches and methodologies that will offer essential transversal skills for enabling them be ready to respond to international trade and market demands and enhancing the extroversion and the competitiveness of the industry as a whole. Bringing together the different sectors of fashion industries, the proposed protocol will follow a comprehensive learner-centered approach and will be coupled with an integrated certification framework, based on acquired knowledge, skills and competences, in line with the European Qualification Framework (EQF). The objective of the proposed project is the design and implementation of an innovative and comprehensive training protocol. Work-based training ICT tools in fashion industries are generally very outdated. They exist, but their availability is often not sufficient, the content is out-of-date and its distribution is not organised satisfactorily. Majority of present information materials regarding exports and global market information are at disposal only in paper form and most of them don’t cover modern trends, materials and fashion. Therefore, such a professional tool is considered extremely useful, since it helps to enhance the international extroversion of the sector especially for SME’s. The platform will focus on online training and will facilitate dissemination of knowledge and sharing of experience. Moreover, it will serve as a medium for all stakeholders in the field to share concerns and advice, as well as promote employment opportunities. The platform will respond to fashion marketing skills and for that scope will concentrate information and data regarding third countries market mechanisms and their function market’s technical requirements, recent trends of fashion marketing and expo’s evaluation in the global market, market’s development, development of the demand of sector’ s products, consumer’s behaviors and habits, trend analysis, demand chain, mechanisms for directs distribution of a product to international markets (by identifying customers;meeting their needs; implementing sales plans).
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