Even topping the Fashion Roundtable last June which focussed on web innovations, the Fashion Commerce Forum last week in Hamburg brought to light the transformation happening now in the fashion industry (presentations in German from Ecco, Design3000, Conleys, Limango, Spreadshirt and Brax):
- The brands/manufacturers are pushing themselves more and more into the Internet space and often become their own retailers (as also seen in the offline business).
- Equivalently, classic (online) merchants such as ASOS are increasingly covering themselves by strengthening their in-house brand positions within their product palette.
- At the same time, a new form of fashion retailer is emerging, who are indeed more like a service provider for the brands/manufacturers rather than a merchant in the classical sense.
Particularly in this area there is huge untapped potential for innovative online services which would offer solutions for the obvious and foreseeable problems faced by the brands/manufacturers.
The Effects of the Transformation
The spectrum today is already vast. On one end there are vendors such as Vente-Privée, Brands4Friends and the like, who specialize in very precise and targeted overstock liquidation (see also "How The Secondary Market is Changing E-commerce"). On the other side there are fashion platforms such as Stylight, Stylefruits, Smatch and others who are offering new revenue channels via modern (and emotion-based) sales approaches.
According to our estimates, parallel to services such as Yoox, DePauli/Herrenausstatter or Design3000 (and their exclusive branded shops), in particular logistic service providers (such as Dohmen Solutions and Hellmann) will be cutting a larger piece of the fashion pie and in effect increasingly become competition for the established (mail-order) businesses.
Already today they are bundling a multiple of brands together. And as soon as they have reached a certain scale, they are able to consider multiple-brand shopping platforms and strategic concepts for increasing revenue streams for their clients. In particular the Netrada initiative (GE/EN) from Heycom is moving in this direction.
One can already deduce: The fashion industry will be offering more than enough interesting material in the next while to feed further Fashion Commerce Forums. Thanks for all participants and speakers for the exciting discussions!
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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