Digital Showrooming Fetched Impressive Investment Before Covid-19

A survey amongst 216 exhibiting fashion companies at the ModeFabriek trade show in January 2020 was commissioned by Colect.io to gain insight into the use of digital solutions by the B2B sector and wholesale side of the business. This was weeks before markets went into lockdown and Covid-19 related restrictions were put in place across Europe.

“The overall participation and the amount of valuable insights this research delivered, exceeded our exceptions”, said Arthur Hoffman, Executive Director of Colect.io in a press release. “It clearly highlights the need and desire amongst fashion brands to invest in presenting their collections digitally and virtually, drive more efficiency via self-service, and become smarter on B2B marketing. The challenges posed by the coronavirus restrictions, and new social distancing norms, have simply further strengthened that focus and demand”.

The survey was conducted by students from the University of Amsterdam who approached 216 participants that formed a balanced representation across small, medium and large fashion companies-with the majority residing in Northern Europe (Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, Sweden and the UK).

Further, the research shows that 69 percent of most companies interviewed choose external specialised SaaS solution providers to support their digital storytelling and order writing process, as part of their back-office/ERP systems or via specialised add-ons like Colect.

Hoffman continued to state, “We see a lot of companies struggling with their own solutions, and recognising the expertise and benefit of leveraging from wider industry innovation that specialised and dedicated SaaS solution providers can bring. And nice to see Colect.io being ranked as the number one solution provider amongst these participants in terms of market share.”

When it comes to choosing such a solution provider, the overall top 3 decision criteria for fashion companies are the following: Technical expertise, Fashion Experience and Customer Service, closely followed by Price as the fourth criteria. Though the survey also highlights some local nuances, with Germans ranking Customer Service as the number one decision criterion, compared to the French and Danish who value this less. And for the Belgiums and French, fashion experience is ranked highest when it comes to selecting the right solution provider. Local presence ranked relatively low, with number seven, which indicates the fact that fashion companies simply prefer the best internationally available solution.

Fashion industry has well adopted tech-driven solutions to carry out operations. Like Colect, iDesigniBuy is also a SaaS provider majorly for retail industry. We offer customization software for diverse applications to give your patrons a personalized treat on their product selection.

Source: Fashion United