What fashion retail professionals need to know today

Find the most relevant industry news and insights for working fashion professionals retailUpdated monthly with job interviews, speaking engagements or promoting market awareness and emulating market leaders to do a better job in the workplace.

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Key articles and must-know insights for retail professionals today:

1. 5 ways retailers can get an edge using data

Companies can collect petabytes of data covering everything from weather to marketing to help them predict customer behavior, identify trends, or what to stock — and where. [However,] No single data point is a silver bullet. The best decisions still come from robust data sets that provide the most complete picture possible.

Using AI, Levi found that a difference of one degree Celsius between Rome and Milan is enough to affect customer behavior in those cities. Neiman Marcus [connects] Customer data with sales data to determine what consumers want but aren’t getting; [Mytheresa predicts customers’ lifetime value based on] Databases such as which items consumers view, which emails they open, and which payment methods they use.

Related Jobs:

Personal Marketing and Customer Relationship Manager Miteresa – Munich, Germany

Area manager, Claudie Pierlot – Germany and the Netherlands

Retail Performance and Store Operations Manager, Neiman Marcus – Las Vegas, United States

2. What makes a luxury store successful?

“Luxury and premium brands have created original retail spaces,” said retail consultant Jeremy Bergstein. But they need to keep updating them and give consumers a reason to visit.

Best-in-class stores offer a multi-level experience that allows them to treat both prospectors and VICs (or very important customers) in one place. Balenciaga’s new “Couture Store” concept – which opened on the floor of the Paris salon at the time of the launch of the latest collection – will bridge this gap, giving the discerning consumer access to limited edition products created by the same suppliers. Designs made to order. The goal is to reach potential customers, but also to entertain the masses and introduce them to the concept.

Related Jobs:

Store Manager, Fursac – Stuttgart, Germany

Flag General Manager, Carolina Herrera – New York, United States

Boutique Manager, Luxury Edition – Maldives

3. What starters have in common is that they have eliminated the DTC fault

Hair care brand Olaplex, which went public the day after Warby Parker last September, has built its business the old-fashioned way with the support of salons and celebrity hairstylists. Direct sales is the brand’s fastest-growing channel, but it comes after it has a following and ranks alongside wholesalers with Sephora and Ulta.

Sales are important, but so are where those sales occur and how much it costs to produce them. Brands that act like the industry authorities – but with better products and smarter marketing – are thriving. They have the luxury of borrowing the best from the DTC playbook while sidestepping the pitfalls that have ensnared many newbies.

Related Jobs:

E-Commerce Manager, Zalando – Berlin, Germany

Digital Shopper, Bloomingdale’s – New York, United States

Assistant Store Manager, Ralph Lauren – Burbank, United States

4. Navigating a new era of risk in retail

If there is one image of the collapse of the global supply chain in the Covid-19 crisis, it is the eternal given that more than twenty thousand cargoes destined for Western retailers are stuck in a diagonal death grip in the Suez Canal. . For a week, the ship jammed shipping services around the world, halting nearly $10 billion in trade a day, before it was finally freed.

[The fragility of] Most supply chains [today makes sense considering they] They are simply a collection of interconnected individual companies, each with their own goals, information and resources, and an acceptable share of the financial risk in any supply chain. Parties forced to take on more risk will similarly seek to impose that risk on others in the chain. Soon, trust suffers, performance declines, corners are cut and links in the chain weaken, exposing everyone to greater risk that often only becomes fully apparent when a problem occurs.

Related Jobs:

Inventory Controller, Maje – Paris, France

Retail Planner, PVH – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Stock Manager, Prada Group – New York, United States

5. What happens after the resale value of sneakers is high?

Supply chain disruptions have left distribution for carefully managed brands like Nike and Adidas, said Dylan Dietrich, author of the 2019 book “Sneakonomic Growth” and head of research at Altan Insights, a data and research provider that focuses on alternative assets, including sneakers. . [Also] A sense of fatigue in this regard, sneaker insiders say, is prevalent among consumers who experience too much exposure.

[Nevertheless,] Analysts say the sneaker resale market’s best days are still ahead. Investment firm Cowen projects that global sneaker resale will reach $30 billion by 2030, up from $6 billion in 2020, as new customers multiply and the average selling price actually increases. This means that while small businesses and some individual sellers find it hard to make money flipping shoes, the big players in resale are poised to get even bigger.

Related Jobs:

Stock Room Supervisor Tommy Hilfiger – Dublin, Ireland

Store Manager Gani – Berlin, Germany

Retail Operations Assistant, Vega – New York, United States

6. The J.Crew and Gap comeback playbooks couldn’t be more different. Only one works.

Gap’s board of directors are not happy. The retailer’s CEO Sonia Singhal, whose Yeezy partnership was announced earlier this month, has abruptly left the company. Balenciaga’s involvement has also ended, and there’s no word on what will become of Yeezy Gap after the current collection is complete. Barring a change in strategy – not impossible from an individual perspective – Space has a successful but small sub-brand on its hands and the company will be back somewhere to save itself.

Under J.Crew CEO Libby Waddle, on the other hand, the turnaround strategy from day one was based on retail fruits. Today, the entire offering feels united by its vision. Rather than banking on the vision of an iconoclastic superstar, J.Crew has achieved this by hiring creative leaders who can tap into the current fashion moment and have a history of collaboration. In the first quarter of 2022, J.Crew’s sales grew 25 percent.

Related Jobs:

Produce Specialist, Dover Street Market – London, United Kingdom

Visual Design Intern, Maison Margiela – Paris, France

Customer Engagement Manager, Burberry – Tokyo, Japan

7. What happens when the e-commerce boom ends?

During the pandemic, retailers large and small designed to make shopping safe and efficient. Stores became mini-warehouses that fulfilled and shipped online orders. Once a great perk, the ability to buy something online and pick it up in a store has become commonplace. Once considered a relatively sophisticated e-commerce tool, the ability to see which products are in which stores on a brand’s website is now commonplace.

For brands moving to online sales in 2020, this is not the case. [easy to steer] Return investments and marketing dollars to physical stores. People may be shopping online again, but how they shop has changed irrevocably in the last couple of years. Consumer needs have changed, whether they’ve moved from home to a more permanent work lifestyle or from the city to the suburbs. When they enter stores, they expect more to click to order.

Related Jobs:

Assistant Store Manager, Joseph – London, United Kingdom

Visual Manager, Calvin Klein – Sunrise, United States

Head of Store Development, Charles & Keith – Singapore

8. Explainer – Why the menswear market is on fire

The rise of menswear is largely driven by fashion resets. The removal of men’s clothing began before the epidemic, but in The new indoor lifestyle of 2020 presented new images that prioritize comfort.

Low barriers to entry and the proliferation of social media have created opportunities for new brands to launch. New luxury cult brands such as Aimé Leon Dore captured the popularity of contemporary menswear by playing a major role in trends such as “blokecore” – a viral subculture that celebrates the style of middle-aged men, such as wide-leg jeans, padded cardigans, polo shirts and bucket hats. Blockcore’s hashtag has over 27 million views on TikTok.

Related Jobs:

Operations Manager Amiri – New York, United States

CRM Coordinator, Ermenegildo Zegna Group – Bal Harbor, United States

Assistant Store Manager, Hugo Boss – Toronto, Canada