Why PLM is no longer enough: The fashion market faces new challenges
While the fashion industry experiences an unprecedented transformation, going from two collections per year to an unlimited creation cycle, consumers are becoming increasingly demanding. At the same time, data is scattered throughout all steps of the production chain with omnichannel retail compounding the challenges. In this context and now more than ever, fashion companies need a 360° view of all their activities.
Social networks transformed into retail spaces, sustainable development as the new model, marketplaces as new potential sales channels... these are some of the challenges fashion companies can expect. In this context, each day there is slightly more need to create free-flowing exchanges within working organizations and to offer integrated tools that are accessible to all. Also necessary are competitor analysis solutions to facilitate pricing or restocking decisions and accessible PLM and PIM that communicate with the marketplace. To respond to this need, Lectra believes that solutions must be more and more integrated and hosted on an easily accessible, adaptable and ultra-secure cloud.
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Why PLM should be seen as a first step to a more complete solution
With a fashion PLM as native cloud solution, a fashion company can manage a large amount of heterogeneous data in a simple and structured manner. All decision-makers have access to the same level of information no matter where they are in the world. With just a click, the information sought is found and shared. This situation becomes possible with a solution that is 100% adaptive, responsive and accessible on all devices.
Why competitor analysis speeds up decision-making
While consumer behavior has become increasingly varied and unpredictable, brands and resellers must be able to analyze their market and especially their competitors' sales strategies: what products have they just made available for sale again? In what market? At what price? Many determining factors are involved in decision-making, whether during the design of a collection, its positioning, pattern selection, as well as the best price.
Why the big brands are so interested in marketplaces
Marketplaces represent unprecedented potential in terms of new available customers just a few clicks away. Add to that the opportunity to retake control of their communications by speaking directly to end customers and you have some of the arguments convincing the big market brands to invest heavily in the marketplaces field. But refined customer knowledge is a science that cannot be improvised. So how can you be present all over the world, while still taking local particularities into account? You'd better have good support and good advice.
Why you should be able to integrate PIM with your other solutions
In the fashion market specifically, a Product Information Management (PIM) solution is used to share all your information with all your teams, both digital and on the ground. You no longer risk your customers reading contradicting information, whether at a store, on your website or in marketplaces. Flowing smoothly, the information is collected, distributed and enriches. And it is based on each sales channel.
We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution, with value chains that appear as quickly as they disappear and where the customers lead the way. This reality emphasizes how important it is for the fashion industry to have a 360° view of their products.
Retail Industry advisory, Retail Industry Advisor, Consumer Market at Microsoft, leading partner
Why better fashion market digitalization goes through a cloud-based application
The cloud offers scaling, or scalability, of your systems. Why is that good? It responds to a very fluid market where activity can spike in less than 24 hours due to good press, such as a TV segment on the 8 o'clock news, for example. On the other hand, the cloud saves resources when activity calms down. The cloud also offers the opportunity to roll out a technological center common to all customers, while offering them a customized environment based on their specifics (business process, etc.).
Why integrated solutions help optimize your sales
PLM, PIM, DAM, ERP... The solutions at the core of an apparel company are expanding and must increasingly integrate with each other to provide greater fluidity among the different players in the production chain of a garment. Solutions that offer the ability to share all cumulative data with each other are key.
Yet these solutions that manage your products, from their design to their sale, encompassing all your sales channels, are as numerous as the steps in your production cycle. And having a particular process, a dedicated resource each time and for each of them, too often leads to a loss of information. In the case of the fashion market, having more solutions supports the sharing and consolidation of data, which are determining factors in making quick decisions. The more a solution is integrated, the
more the data is refined and conducive to a smooth, easy and efficient customer experience.
Why product traceability is good for your return on investment (ROI)
What if you managed to sell your product even before it has been made? Today, with integrated solutions that share data and communicate with each other, from a PLM to a PIM via a competitive intelligence solution, to a help tool for publication on the biggest marketplaces, product traceability is moving toward this objective. Thus the boundaries between solutions disappear, product information is optimized for each sales channel and a customer is found even before the item is produced. You
reduce stock and the risk of unsold items: one less cost for you, and a planet saved from new unsold products.
