Fast Fashion SaaS: Will you be Shein, Hermès, or History?

Sam Altman recently tweeted that we're "entering the fast fashion era of SaaS very soon." He's right. And if you're running a software business, you need to understand what this means for your survival.

The Fast Fashion Transformation is Here

Just as Zara, H&M, and now Shein have transformed retail by collapsing production cycles from months to weeks, AI is collapsing software development from years to days. What once required a team of engineers, months of planning, and significant capital can now be prototyped by a single person with ChatGPT and Cursor in an afternoon - or even built on Lovable in hours by someone with zero experience in software development.

The parallels are striking: fast fashion democratised style by making runway trends accessible to everyone within weeks. Fast SaaS is democratising software by making complex software capabilities accessible to anyone with an idea and an AI assistant.

The fast fashion analogy also tells us that we're about to generate massive amounts of digital waste. Just as fast fashion creates clothing that's worn a few times and discarded, the fast SaaS era threatens to create a bewildering amount of software that's built quickly, used rarely, and abandoned just as rapidly. Just as fast fashion clutters our social media with advertising and our physical closets with clothes we never wear, fast SaaS will clutter the market. The tried and tested SaaS distribution channels will become the equivalent of landfills - overflowing with barely-tested products that compete for attention but deliver little lasting value.

But here's what should keep you up at night: not all fashion brands survived the onslaught of fast fashion. Those who did were forced to make a choice. And that choice is coming for your software business a lot sooner than you think.

Why Fast Fashion SaaS is about to Kill Your Business

Barriers to entry are evaporating. That moat you built with superior engineering? It's shrinking. When a competitor can replicate 80% of your functionality in a weekend using AI, your three-year head start means less than it used to.

Competition is exploding. There are now hundreds of AI note-taking apps, each slightly different, all competing for the same users. Every vertical is about to experience this proliferation. If you think your niche is too specific to attract competition, you're wrong - fast SaaS makes even micro-niches economically viable.

Your distribution channels are about to fail. Elena Verna calls it "the great distribution disruption" - when AI can generate unlimited products, it can also generate unlimited marketing. Your SEO rankings will be buried under an avalanche of AI-optimised content while users start using ChatGPT more than Google. Your Product Hunt launch competes with hundreds of AI-built tools launching the same day. Your Google Ads compete with venture-backed copycats and bootstrap solopreneurs alike, all using the same AI to write better copy than yours. The channels that took years to master will be unusable in months.

Products are becoming hyper-specialised. Why use generic project management software when there's an AI-built solution specifically for creative agencies that manage exactly seven clients who all use Figma? The long tail of software is about to get very, very long.

Your customers might not need you anymore. This is the brutal one. Some of your customers are already building their own internal tools with AI or deploying AI agents instead of buying your software. "Build vs buy" calculations have fundamentally shifted when "build" means prompting an AI for a few hours rather than hiring a development team for months.

The old defensibility playbooks - network effects, switching costs, data advantages - still matter, but they're no longer sufficient. When anyone can build a "good enough" alternative in days, you need a new strategy.

The Fashion Playbook for Software

The fashion industry has been here before. When fast fashion emerged, fashion brands faced an existential choice. They largely split into three successful strategies, embodied by LVMH, Shein, and Hermès.

The LVMH Model: Scale, Portfolio, and Accessible Luxury

LVMH owns 75+ brands across every price point and category. They've adopted fast fashion as their own, developing efficient production while maintaining brand prestige. They went broad, using operational excellence to compete on multiple fronts.

The Shein Model: AI-Native Algorithmic Evolution

Shein didn't just do fast fashion faster. They built an entirely different beast - an AI-driven organism that uses real-time data to predict trends, test products in micro-batches, and evolve continuously based on customer behaviour. They don't just respond to demand; they create and shape it algorithmically.

In SaaS terms, the Shein path means building products that:

• Use AI not just in development, but as the core engine of the product itself
• Continuously reshape themselves based on usage patterns
• Run hundreds of experiments simultaneously
• Let the algorithm, not the product manager, decide what features to build

Companies like TikTok (yes, it's SaaS for creators) and Canva are already doing this. Their products are different for each user segment, constantly evolving based on behaviour patterns we don't even consciously recognise.

But be mindful of the externalities of this choice - what happens when Shein-model companies' AIs start building and launching their own micro-SaaS products? What will the cost of this digital waste be?

The Hermès Model: Extreme Focus on Craft

A Birkin bag has a multi-year waitlist because their artisan model means Hermès literally can't make more without first taking decades to train more artisans, so exclusivity becomes the product. They went deep, choosing to be irreplaceable for a specific customer rather than accessible to many.

And here's what the fast SaaS advocates won't tell you: there's a massive difference between buying a £10 t-shirt that falls apart after a few wears and entrusting your business operations to untested, AI-generated software. When Marks & Spencer suffered a cyber attack in April 2025 - one that came through a third-party supplier - it cost them £300 million in lost profits and took their online operations offline for 46 days. The attack didn't even come through M&S's own systems; it came through the supply chain, through a vendor that had been socially engineered.

This is the hidden risk of fast SaaS. Every weekend-built micro-SaaS, every AI-generated tool that promises to solve your problems for £9/month, every "good enough" alternative - they're all potential risk vectors. When software can be built in days, who's thinking about security architecture? Who's planning for disaster recovery? Who's even around to answer the phone when your business-critical system built by a solo developer and an AI goes down?

The Hermès path isn't just about exclusivity - it's about trust. It's about being the vendor that Fortune 500 companies choose precisely because they know you've invested millions in security, compliance, and reliability. It's about being the boring, expensive choice that nobody gets fired for buying.

Making Your Choice

Michael Porter said strategy is about "deliberately choosing to be different." In the fast fashion era of SaaS, leveraging Hamilton Helmer's "7 Powers" framework to make that choice is existential.

The LVMH Path: Platform and Portfolio

If you choose the LVMH path, you're accepting that individual products will be commoditised, but betting you can win through:

Platform power. Become the infrastructure others build on. Shopify isn't worried about fast SaaS because every new e-commerce tool increases demand for their platform.

Portfolio breadth. Own multiple products that integrate deeply. Microsoft and Adobe aren't just selling tools; they're selling ecosystems that become more valuable as fast SaaS creates point solutions that need to integrate with something.

Operational excellence at scale. Use AI yourself to ship faster than the fast SaaS competitors. If someone can build 80% of your product in a weekend, you need to be shipping new improvements and capabilities every week.

Distribution as a moat. When products are commoditised, distribution becomes king. Salesforce doesn't win on features; they win because they have an army of consultants and a salesforce (pun intended) that reaches every enterprise.

The Shein Path: Algorithmic Domination

If you choose the Shein path, you're betting on building an AI-native company from the ground up:

Product-market fit through evolution, not planning. Launch 100 micro-features, see what sticks, double down on winners, kill losers - all automatically.

Personalisation at scale. Every user gets a slightly different product optimised for their behaviour patterns.

Data flywheel from day one. Every interaction makes the product better for everyone. You're not building software; you're building a learning system.

The Hermès Path: Craft and Conviction

If you choose the Hermès path, you're betting that in a world of infinite software, some customers will pay premium prices for:

Obsessive focus on a specific customer. April Dunford's "Obviously Awesome" makes this clear: positioning isn't about being everything to everyone; it's about being obviously perfect for someone. When there are 500 note-taking apps, be the only one that investment bankers can't live without.

Experience as a differentiator. Linear isn't just another issue tracker; it's a statement about how modern software teams should work. Superhuman isn't just fast email; it's a status symbol.

Premium pricing as a feature. Some B2B software buyers want to pay more because it signals seriousness, ensures quality support, and keeps out competitors. Price can be a moat.

Making Your Choice Real

It’s not enough to assess the options; at some point, you have to choose one strategic path and execute it. Choosing between LVMH, Shein, and Hermès isn't just a philosophical exercise that can stay on a PowerPoint slide - choices this fundamental and existential need to cascade through every level of your organisation. This is where the Decision Stack becomes essential. Your strategic choice needs to flow from vision through strategy, objectives, and opportunities, all the way down to daily execution.

Whatever you choose, it also has to align with your organisation’s constraints - for example, if you're venture-backed and choose the Hermès path, prepare for difficult board conversations about TAM and growth rates.

If you choose the Hermès path of obsessive focus, that choice needs to be reflected in:

• Your vision of who you're serving and why
• Your strategy for how you'll win in that specific market
• Your objectives that measure depth over breadth
• Your opportunity selection that says no to anything that dilutes focus
• Your execution principles that prioritise craft over speed

Similarly, the LVMH path requires alignment from your platform vision down to how individual teams prioritise integration over perfection, and the Shein path requires alignment on speed over planning.

Without this alignment, you'll make a strategic choice at the leadership level that never translates into actual change. Your teams will still be building features for everyone while you're talking about focus, or trying to be craftspeople while you're measuring them on velocity.

The Clock is Ticking

If you haven't chosen your path soon, the market will choose for you. And the market's choice is always the same: irrelevance. Fast fashion had physical constraints - shipping, manufacturing, and materials. Fast SaaS has none of these. The speed of disruption will be 10x faster.

The companies that will thrive aren't the ones with the best features today. They're the ones with the clearest strategy for tomorrow. They're building compounding advantages while everyone else is playing feature catch-up.

Look at your business honestly:

• What moats are you actually building versus imagining you have?
• Are you trying to be "premium but affordable" or "focused but flexible"? (If yes, you're already dead.)
• Can you name the specific customers who would riot if you disappeared tomorrow?
• If someone with $10k and a month could rebuild your product, what would stop your customers from switching?

Is your Business Dead?

Here's what nobody wants to admit: Most SaaS companies are already dead. They're the walking dead of the software world - still moving, still shipping features, still closing deals, but fundamentally already disrupted by fast SaaS. They just don't know it yet.

The question isn't whether AI will commoditise your software. It will. Or whether customers will build their own tools. They will. Or whether 100 competitors will emerge in your space. They will.

The only question that matters is this: When your customers can build your product in a weekend, why will they still choose you on Monday? If your answer is "because we're cheaper" or "because we have more features," you're already dead. If your answer is "because when their business is on the line, they can't afford to trust anyone else," you might just survive.

Choose your path. Move with conviction. Because in just a few months - not years - the fast SaaS era will have sorted the market into three categories: platforms, algorithms, and craftspeople.

Everyone else? They'll be history.