The COVID-19 pandemic introduced great insecurity for even the most successful brands, virtually overnight. While the virus has been one of the most challenging obstacles fashion has ever encountered, the industry is positioned to continue full speed ahead. The ability to digitally buy and sell wholesale merchandise has been a game changer, helping businesses act nimbly and flexibly to reach their goals. And while many travel restrictions remain in place, the top digital trade show events and fashion weeks create perfect opportunities to develop and nurture the relationships required to truly build global fashion brands. In this post, find out about my wholesale route and how your brand can build a wholesale business that ultimately improves global awareness and presence.
Develop a Digital Merchandising Strategy
Create a custom B2B merchandising strategy specifically aimed towards presenting and selling your goods in a digital format. Digital trade shows, showrooms, and fashion shows call for different gameplans that show your B2C e-commerce website and retail storefronts. One of the greatest advantages of digital is that you can continuously hone your merchandising, marketing, and sales skills with data. The more you sell and market online, the more informed your strategies will be.
Specifically, you can use data from a B2B e-commerce platform to track your best and slowest-selling SKUs, sell-through rates, and top-performing categories and styles at specific retailers, in specific regions, and for specific segments of your target market. These and other data points and trends will enhance your assortment planning decisions, introduce greater opportunities to improve average-order-value with key retailers, and cultivate an understanding of how to grow your business with existing and potential clients.
Choose the Best Digital Trade Events for Your Brand
The industry is abundant with digital wholesale opportunities, including trade events hosted by our partners. We’re fortunate to name Informa, the CFDA, New York Fashion Week, Camera Moda, and Milano Fashion Week among our valued fashion partnerships. We’re wrapping up a two-month digital trade show with Informa, the largest exhibition company on the planet. We worked together to bring all five fashion trade shows that would have been held in Vegas to the digital realm for a special pandemic-safe edition. COTERIE, MAGIC, PROJECT, MICAM Americas, and Children’s Club were all brought online connecting brands and retailers and facilitating sales 24 hours a day, for eight weeks. Stay tuned for the most suitable upcoming Informa and Fashion Week events for your business and clientele.
Plan for Uncertain Demand
With so much variety in markets around the globe, it’s important to alter your demand planning approach accordingly. Use the aforementioned data to help guide your decisions, but also speak to your wholesale partners to find out what their new top-selling categories are, how their open-to-buy budgets have increased or contracted, and other key information to inform your forecasting and assortment planning.
Explore In-Season Immediates
Selling ATS inventory to wholesale buyers gives you a lot more opportunities to reach sell-through goals, as well as many more opportunities to begin relationships with new wholesale accounts. Analyze your offerings to determine which SKUs would be best suited to sell at any time.
Perfect Your Pricing
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a major shakeup in the world of fashion industry supply chains and manufacturing. Revisit your pricing with a performance audit across specific collections, categories and SKUs. You may find your product margins are suffering in some cases or that you could benefit from decreasing your wholesale prices in other situations. Every time you switch suppliers, introduce new textiles or do business with new factories, it’s a great idea to reexamine costs and pricing.
Secure the Best Digital Tools
Get the best digital tools into the hands of your employees. Look into remote productivity and project management tools, decide which virtual communication and presentation tools are your favorites, and integrate them into your international wholesale business practices. You may not be able to visit that buyer in her Parisian office this season, but it’s business as usual and imperative to keep up.
Supercharge Your Storytelling Skills
Storytelling is a vital tool for selling fashion. With buyers unable to see, touch, and feel your designs in person, it becomes even more imperative to enhance your storytelling skills. What can you do to convey the essence of your brand online? How can you visually and verbally communicate the ideas, inspirations, and components of your collections? There are plenty of opportunities to gain new clients and strengthen relationships with existing partners from afar. What makes your products enticing?
