COVID-19 continues to take its toll on retail. In the middle of a pandemic and with an unprecedented economic crisis around the corner, over the past few months the retail world has had no choice but to adapt in order to survive. We have analyzed the most effective strategy for getting ahead in this industry: rolling out online commerce.
Accelerated digitalization
In an article published in the financial newspaper Cinco Días, journalist Ana Muñoz analyzes luxury online businesses. Until now, online sales barely reached 20% at luxury fashion brands. However, the coronavirus has forced a change in user behavior, driving online sales up. The upward trend of e-commerce is a bet that more and more businesses are placing. The current health and economic crisis has accelerated this process dramatically. With the arrival of 2020, the time has come to digitalize the retail industry in order to stay afloat.
Omnichannel had, until now, been a strategy generally accepted and adopted by most retailers.
However, as a result of the health emergency, many retailers that had been lagging behind or remained skeptical have rethought their approach and tried to embrace this strategy in order to adapt to their customers’ new consumption habits. As Luis Sans (director of the multi-brand store Santa Eulalia) clarifies in Cinco Días, this digitalization and omnichannel approach does not have to replace anything, but rather turn the consumer experience into a more complete one.
We analyze current trends
At StockAgile, we want to highlight some of the trends that will shape the future of the industry:
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Click & collect. Buy online and pick it up in the physical store. They will even bring the order out to your car without you having to get out of it.
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Doing away with sales and seasons. As Toni Ruiz, CEO of Mango, pointed out, it makes no sense to launch the sales season when the season itself hasn’t even started yet. What’s more, one of the industry’s great luxury brands, Gucci, has decided to join this initiative. It announced that it will abandon the concept of seasons, saying goodbye to seasonal collections for good.
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Flexibility. Faced with the threat of a possible new outbreak, being flexible is essential in order to be ready for further changes. Having the right tools to be able to work from home while keeping up the pace of the office.
The importance of choosing the right software
Many retailers already use software to automate their processes. We believe this software must be flexible, since the sector demands it, as well as intuitive and up to date.
In the end, opting for software that doesn’t meet these criteria will cause it to become obsolete and end up generating greater costs.
Moreover, the trends mentioned above don’t just imply digitalization, but a complete overhaul of the entire business model: logistics, manufacturing and sales.
Therefore, a system like StockAgile, capable of supporting all these transformations while remaining flexible and regularly updated in the face of the uncertainty this chaotic 2020 holds for us, is essential to successfully sustain the retail industry over the long term.
Want to be ready for this new era? StockAgile enables your company to stay one step ahead in the post-COVID era. Connect your online store to the catalog, orders and stock of your warehouses and stores in real time. That way, any stock movement is immediately updated in your e-commerce. In short, optimize your resources and grow your business.
