SOURCING at MAGIC 2025: Guiding Fashion Toward Regulation, Responsibility, and Sustainable Solutions

Late last year, MMGNET and The Interline released Fashion & Technology in 2025 after surveying 160 fashion businesses worldwide, and revealed that fashion’s top priorities for 2025 include profitability and protecting margins; forecasting and meeting consumer demand; and complying with legislation for sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental social governance (ESG). 

This indicates that on a global scale, fashion professionals acknowledge that while profitability is the primary concern, regulatory compliance is also top of mind. And finding an equilibrium between these twin pressures has quickly become one of the central tensions at the heart of fashion – a balancing act that will continue throughout this year and far beyond.

That same research also made it clear just how far the role of fashion professionals has changed, with the vast majority of people – across the full spectrum of job roles from design to retail – now interacting with technology on a regular basis, and with the same people increasingly aware of how the choices they make influence not just the design, performance, and profitability of the finished product, but its extended impact. 

This changing expectation, in turn, is already demanding deeper connectivity across the different stages of a given product’s lifecycle. Beyond the selection of  materials and accountability for labour choices, current and future regulations will also require a robust level of visibility into emissions and impact throughout the extended upstream lifecycle, ongoing logistics, post-consumer circularity, and much more.

Each role in fashion’s sourcing and value chain – whether in design, development, sourcing, merchandising, marketing, or sales – has power over this impact, and each of those roles is now being tasked with influencing those outcomes for the better.

Making positive choices, though, is not always straightforward. As fashion professionals know, the industry’s supply chain is notoriously complex and layered due its distributed, global nature. And although legislation mandating disclosure across all of those different, complex, tiers currently applies primarily to the biggest businesses, regulations are designed to cascade downwards – applying progressively over time to smaller and smaller brands and retailers.

As a result, in the near future most fashion businesses – and by extension most fashion professionals who work within them, and make extensive use of technology – will soon need to track and disclose a dataset that’s both broad and deep, across all these different variables. Without technology, reliably collecting and communicating this information will be extremely challenging, if not impossible – which is why the conversations around compliance, sustainability and technology have become so intertwined, in a similar way to how creative design and technical product development have become inseparable from technology. 

These themes will be covered throughout SOURCING at MAGIC next month, with The Interline and other partners returning to the show from 10th to 12th February, at the Las Vegas Convention Centre. On-site, The Interline will once again bring the fashion technology conversation to life with a standalone keynote presentation, an exclusive joint session on AI, and a behind-closed doors VIP Summit panel on AI ecosystem maturity, with leading brand and manufacturing speakers sharing their expertise.

More practical steps and actionable solutions will also be covered in detail in the next instalment of The Interline and SOURCING at MAGIC’s “Fashion Technology Foundations” series, which will focus in on how sustainability legislation is evolving, and how designers, entrepreneurs, brands, and retailers of all shapes and sizes can prepare themselves to take measurable action towards accountability.

As the organisers have in previous seasons, the February show will also continue the SOURCING at MAGIC Sustainable + Social Good program, which aligns the objectives of global sourcing with the United Nations (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The organisers will continue to partner with Hey Social Good to review and verify exhibitors’ commitment to social and environmental responsibility. 

And at the technology level, exhibitors will include:

AIMS360: a leading cloud based fashion business management software for the fashion industry. With AIMS360, businesses can manage styles, import and production, orders, inventory, AR, EDI, and much more.

Tukatech: proud provider of design software and hardware, offering solutions for fashion businesses of all sizes, including demand manufacturing.

StyleAI: the AI-powered platform transforming essential marketing services for businesses. Purpose-built for growth, StyleAI uses advanced AI to automate SEO, Google Ads, and social media optimization, making sophisticated, data-driven marketing effortless.

AIMIRR: providing patent pending technology that enables e-commerce stores to offer virtual measuring, size recommendation, and virtual fitting room experiences. The solution seamlessly integrates with any ecommerce provider, providing a hassle-free and accurate way for customers to find their perfect fit.

For more details around the upcoming event, including registration and travel details, and other essential industry resources, visit SOURCING at MAGIC. 

Beyond the scope of sustainability, the SOURCING at MAGIC team also supported The Interline’s DPC Report 2024, published just before the holidays. That report showcases, for another year, how tightly wound-up technology and the core creative and engineering drives of fashion have become.