Spanish fashion giant Mango had big news Thursday announcing its move from a fast fashion business model to an even faster fashion one and an increased focus on the digital channel. The company said today that it’s going to offer new product every two weeks as part of a business transformation that it’s calling a “major revolution”.

Along with the new, 26-drops-a-year model, it will no longer print 22m catalogues each year and will make online (currently accounting for just 10% of turnover) its biggest focus.

So, that means from February – when the SS16 offer starts to drop in-store – we’ll see faster, fortnightly response to the strongest trends. They’ll be backed up by a new ad campaign every month “featuring the latest trend and represented by the face that best defines it”.  Digital will be key for these campaigns and the company will also publish new trends content every fortnight via its digital channels.

All this change makes the decision to axe its print catalogues pretty logical as they would struggle to keep up with the pace of new trend development.

It also raises a few questions: How will its rivals respond? I can’t wait to find out the answer to that one. Also, where does it leave the traditional two-seasons-a-year trends model?  That’s an even tougher one but it’s a question that the entire industry will have to answer some time soon.

The question was first asked back in the late 90s when the ‘fast fashion’ became the business model to follow. Back then it was all about retailers being in the driving seat and getting manufacturers to race to make faster deliveries of the trends those retailers had identified after long and careful research. But the spring/summer and autumn/winter concept still just-about-worked.

But in a world where online, social media, and peer ‘likes’ are what count, fast fashion has morphed into a scenario where the consumer is more in control and the retailers are racing to keep up. With this move Mango is making sure it’s ahead of the game but also saying two mega seasons a year just don’t work. Welcome to the world of the micro season…