Fashion

Fashion & Luxury is the customer-centric sector par excellence, in which customer requests and habits make it necessary to follow innovation paths in terms of customer experience and therefore technology. It is no coincidence that Fashion Retail has been a pioneer compared to other markets in some of the key Digital Transformation steps, starting out with the Omnichannel approach.

Many players in the industry are currently completing the transition from manufactoring to retail, managing the entire supply chain and building up direct relationships with fashion shoppers, but today the real focus to consider is product uniqueness, in all its forms and with all the consequences on the business model:

1. Each fashion item gives rise to multiple references, by size, color, material and the difficulty of finding the desired product is also linked to the seasonality of collections.
   Points of sale, as well as online channels, therefore need to handle replenishment of a usually very limited part of the collection in a very short space of time.
2. The key to success is to get that particular product to the customer, as soon as possible, in their preferred location, thanks to omni-channel inventory visibility and management of the fulfillment chain directly or through third parties.

There is a need for brands to use all touchpoints and online and in-store sales channels, both to improve customer satisfaction by supplying the product, and to support brand awareness, sometimes at the expense of margins (bearing in mind that the margins in fashion are the highest of all sectors and allow for products to be shipped very far, and also through intermediaries).

"Fifty-five percent of shopper assistants do not access their store's inventory"

_{(source Research News 2018)}

We have entered the Unified Commerce era, in which product and customer are brought together thanks to the wide range of possible sales channels and to processes and technologies that allow a rich and digitized product description, access to stock information for every channel and logistics center, which is updated and shared in real time with both the end customer and the store assistant.

Each Fashion brand must arrange the order management and fulfillment process with omni-channel order management solutions, given the need to rely on multiple sales access channels:

• Retail (traditional bricks-and-mortar), the direct sales network of the brand, with salespeople who, thanks to the endless aisle, sell the product even if they are not present in the specific point of sale
• Pop-up stores in department stores
• Wholesalers with multi-brand sales, allowing fashion brands to obtain a widespread territorial presence
• Franchising
• Proprietary e-commerce operations
• Mass marketplaces such as Amazon, or premium marketplaces such as Yoox-Net-A-Porter, crucial both in the product search phase thanks to the size of their catalog, quality and customization of the customer experience
• e-tailers such as Farfetch, an alternative business model to wholesalers that allows the shopper to buy directly from the point of sale of the represented brands. Farfetch allows independent retailers and the best boutiques in the world to sell their stock online, thanks to an integrated platform that tracks inventory visibility, and therefore the availability of items at different locations, in real time

The perceived customer experience is consistent, even though the delivery of the product is left to the single point of sale,  althought Farfetch also provides technological support for the logistics side of things.

With this business model, every boutique and every fashion manufacturing brand can access the world of online sales: Farfetch is also encouraging its retail partners to buy more and more niche brands, to give new vitality to fashion wholesaling.

The fashion shopper always has the opportunity to find their product, thanks to a boundless digital catalog, and effectively becomes the location themselves.

In the luxury fashion sector, the store assistant helps manage a point of sale that goes beyond the concept of showrooming and becomes a place for experiences which are rich from a transactional point of view.

In this sector, innovation is introduced to improve the use of "compulsory" activities, primarily payment, thanks to the acceptance of new payment methods (mobile payment, self-scanning, self-checkout thanks to RFID technology, e-wallets such as Apple pay), with advanced omni-channel POS systems at the checkout. Store assistants have Mobile POS solutions at their disposal, directly integrated or included in the omni-channel order management system, for mobile checkout in the point of sale, order split between payment methods, and acquisition of customer data.

Clienteling and store engagement solutions allow store assistants to have an omni-channel view of customers, their searches and purchases, in order to guide them in a personal and intimate way towards the purchase, with real-time advice within a path of consolidating long-term loyalty (activating an in-store rewarding logic).

From wishlists, to sizes and shopping history, key customer experience data are always available to improve conversions not only in-store but also online, thanks to chat and appointment booking for reserve in store.

Lutech, thanks to systems integrators and digital companies such as Lutech Tecla, Lutech Ten, Lutech ICTeam, and Lutech Teia, as well as decades of expertise in consultancy and delivery of customer engagement and omni-channel commerce projects, guides the sector's big players  along their end-to-end Digital Transformation paths.

Lutech designs and monitors solutions that allow the integration of existing IT systems, centralizing data within a single back-office and enabling the implementation of new customer journeys and optimization of information flows, in accordance with business logic.

• Business Consulting
• Customer Engagement solution & Data-Driven Marketing
• Omni-channel Commerce
• Product Information Management (PIM)
• Digital Experience Platform (DXP) Web Content Management System (WCMS)
• Omni-channel Order Management (OMS) 
• Clienteling & Mobile POS
• Mobile & in-store digital solutions
• Cloud Data Lake & Analytics
• Cloud Transformation