Melissa McDermott
Director of Growth (Sales / Business Development) Blue Bite
Blue Bite helps brands deliver personalised experiences at scale
Blue Bite was created to deliver the best consumer experiences by empowering brands with powerful, easy-to-use tools to transform products into a digital platform. In 2021, it was acquired by Markem-Imaje, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dover Corporation. Blue Bite adds its innovative consumer engagement solutions to Markem-Imaje’s best-in-class product identification, traceability and brand protection solutions. Blue Bite’s Director of Growth (Sales / Business Development) Melissa McDermott chats with Fibre2Fashion about digital fashion IDs and Product Commerce solution.
What is the benefit for brands in transforming physical products into digital experiences?
When brands transform a product into a digital platform, they create a completely new channel that changes how they connect with consumers and gather product data.
Each connected product is given a unique digital ID that can track it from production through end-of-product-life. This is connected to the item via a connecting technology like a QR code or an NFC tag.
Brands benefit from this digital platform because they use it pre-sale to identify gray market diversion and enable authentication. Consumers benefit because when they scan the connecting technologies post-sale, they launch an authentication experience that also provides exclusive content like care instructions, easy-to-order related products, and more. Connected products also make it simple for consumers to resell, return, re-use or recycle items when they are done with them, getting consumers involved in brands’ sustainability efforts.
Counterfeit goods are a major headache for global fashion brands, especially the luxury ones. How do authentication solutions help these brands tackle the problem?
Brands use authentication solutions before the sale to detect and combat grey market diversion with end-to-end product authentication and tracking, giving them the tools they need to protect against tampering and counterfeits.
Personalised mobile experiences document this entire chain, offering consumers peace of mind that products are authentic and safe.
How do digital fashion IDs help fashion brands solve sustainability issues like transparency?
Lots of brands talk a good sustainability game, but digital IDs provide the chance to back it up. Connected product platforms track unique digital IDs all the way through the supply chain, providing true transparency at every step of the way.
What do you think is the future of luxury industry? At what rate is it expected to grow?
I’ll speak to the growth of connected products, which we’ve seen increase 24x over the past three years! And we don’t see that growth stopping any time soon.
We know that consumers today demand true transparency and sustainability from the brands they buy from, and we are happy to help lead the innovation that brings that sustainability to more and more products.
How can the Blue Bite platform help the fashion and apparel industry?
In addition to the authentication and transparency solutions, brands can also leverage connected products to engage consumers throughout the entire product lifecycle to tell the brand story, sell more products and gain market insights.
How does Blue Bite help luxury brands join the circular economy?
Brands that have joined the circular economy create products that follow a cradle-to-cradle cycle, meaning that items are created, used by the consumer, broken down and recycled or repurposed, all before the cycle starts again.
Blue Bite empowers brands to track and trace items, as well as interact with stakeholders and consumers, every step of the way. Not only can brands tell the sustainable supply chain story to consumers, but they can also provide location- and item-specific instructions for resale and upcycling, ensuring the life of the product doesn’t end with the first consumer.
How does Blue Bite’s Product Commerce solution help retail and e-commerce brands?
Blue Bite’s personalised mobile experiences empower brands to transform every product into a DTC sales channel, inspiring long-term brand loyalty and, ultimately, repeat sales.
Is product commerce a stepping-stone for fashion and retail brand’s sustainability?
One of the ways product commerce can tie into sustainability is through secondary sales. When a consumer sells an item on the secondary market, brands can connect with a second product owner – something never available before. The brand then has the chance to repeat the process and encourage this new owner to participate in sustainability initiatives.
What does Blue Bite platform digital product IDs mean for fashion brands?
All these solutions add up to a new kind of consumer experience that inspires and delights consumers with personalised, always up-to-date content that builds brand awareness, increases transparency and drives loyalty.
How can brands ensure business sustainability with the Blue Bite platform?
The Blue Bite platform delivers tools to enter products into the circular economy. This gives brands and consumers the ability to know the full sustainable story of their items, and to ensure that the items are kept out of landfills.
Which major fashion and retail brands are already using Blue Bite’s service?
We work with several brands, including Adidas, BVLGARI, L’Oreal, eBay, Moët Hennessy and many more.
How does the Blue Bite platform help brands offer a better customer experience?
We provide a brand-owned digital platform that delivers dynamic messaging and experiences directly to consumers. Because these are customised at the item-level to each consumer, Blue Bite helps brands deliver personalised experiences at scale – all without the need to build thousands of individual web pages.
Is Blue Bite coming up with more solutions for fashion and apparel sustainability?
We collect feedback from brands we work with, as well as the industry at large, that helps us continuously innovate our product to provide brands with even more effective ways to connect with consumers and provide sustainable solutions and, overall, a better consumer experience.
Published on: 01/04/2022
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
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