Brands and Retailers landscape is going through a digital transformation, where competition is constant. In recent years, top brands and retailers have seen tremendous competition with many emerging brands. A massive increase in brands, stock keeping units (SKUs), and transactions has increased the opportunities for retailers and customers. 

Changing landscape has thrown many challenges on retailers in terms of space required, capital availability, trackability of customers, transaction, and taxation. The reason behind is lack of technology and change is customer’s behavior. Click to Tweet

In this critical time, brands are coming forward to support retailers with more incentives, tools, and data. 54% of brands plan to incentivize retailers with discounts, rewards, and other benefits while 48% of brands are focusing on providing better tools for discovering products and placing orders, and 46% plan to give retailers visibility to real-time data and sales trends, according to the survey by NuOrder.

Apparel brands and retailers have come across numerous ways to fight the ups-downs of fashion Industry. Leading brands and retailers have well understood the sales mantra – “Engage more with your customers”. That’s mean, how you sell is more important than what you sell.

Here we listed some ways working amazingly for brands and retailers to boom their business.

1) Store

Brands of all sizes are focusing on expanding their stores. Why Store in the era of online shopping? Shopping Insights by Google reported, 87% of shopping research happens online, yet 92% of goods are still purchased is stores. Not only top brands are opening brick-and-mortar stores across the globe, but even the emerging brands are also making stores their priority to get more with less. Even in the digital world, 72% of customers still prefer store-purchase as it gives them to trial on clothes (69%), fitting at its best (68%), item in person (64%), and fabric feel (54%), according to a survey by the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor Survey. On top of all, customers love to know the brands in person and brands can also know their customer’s choice better.

2) Omnichannel

In today’s business world where customers experience with brands and retailers matters the most. Omnichannel marketing is what customers expect from their favorite brands. Harvard Business Review stated, 73% of customers utilize multiple channels to make a purchase. While 71% of brick-and-mortar shoppers use their smartphones to discover product supplements before shopping from a store, backed by Business2Community. That’s why fashion and apparel brands are focusing on multi-channel sales approach with an integrated experience – Omnichannel marketing. This helps brands and retailers to keep their customers engaged from the first impression to the eventual point of sales. Brands need to provide a streamlined and consistent experience as modern customers hop from channel to channel.

3) Subscription 

Shoppers are loving the subscription offered by brands and retailers, be it online or offline. Customers are focusing on “What extra” they are getting and how personalized it is.  The subscription-based business model has exploded in the retail space. All the business is chasing the subscription business model to boost their sales. Apparel brands and retailers are doing it even better. YesMarketing revealed that 60% of customers follow retailers for new products while 63% of customers want to know the sales – rewards, coupons, discounts, membership, and subscription. According to a study by Loyalty, 76% of customers love to get a personalized discount based on their purchase history. Brands and retailers are offering their customers more to make them shop more.

4) Up-Selling

Brands are Retailers offers their customers a chance to purchase upgrades – Up-selling. And it works. According to Econsultancy, it works 20X better than cross-selling. Apparel brands are achieving much higher order values, increasing purchase frequency and ultimately more revenue. Selling to new customers is way difficult than selling to existing ones. According to Marketing Matrics, the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% while the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. The gap is big, and this is what up-selling can do for your brands. Retailers are

moving to up-selling as it helps them to build deeper relationships with customers. Why it’s so effective? As it adds more value to the customer’s purchase and improves their shopping experience.

5) Social Media

Tops brands and retailer have a very strong social presence. Apparel and fashion brands believe in “fishing where fish are biting” and that’s social media. Brands are using all the social media out there at their best, be it – Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, and Instagram. Leading brands and retailers are engaging with their customers on social media content such as videos, blogs, podcasts, pictures, infographic, and storytelling. Customers love to follow the brands they admire on social media as they feel more connected. According to Smart Insights, 90% of social media users have already used social media to communicate with brands. Not only customers but brands are also using it even better to boom their sales. Yesmail reported, 91% of brands are using more than two social media channels.

The Bottom Line

Brands and Retailers are driving their business by an awesome combination of evolving technology and shifting preferences of customers. These are the ways brands are booming their business to achieve higher customer engagement and revenue. According to Accenture Strategy’s Global Consumer Pulse Research, customers of all generation care about what retailers say and how they act. Hence, brands and retailers need to build their business wisely.

Check more Brands and Retailer insights on TexPro – A Market Intelligence Tool designed to Empower the textile and apparel industry with high-quality information.

Get a FREE DEMO.