If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them | How Brick and Mortar Retail Is Leveraging e Commerce Optics to Pivot In Our Digital Age.
Last Year, The US Retail sector saw a record high in store closings with over 6,700 stores shuttered across the country.¹ Major name brands closing their doors included the Gap, Banana Republic, The Limited and drug store juggernaut, Walgreens to name a few. With Q4 fast approaching the retail industry faces another estimated 3,800 store closures² by the end of this year.
But, with a 13% growth in physical retail sales in 2017³ it seems many major retailers are embracing technology and have begun deploying innovative product development and experiential sales channels to reinvent their traditional business models.
To understand the impacts of e Commerce within the business of fashion, we sat down with Missy Arko⁴, Director of Merchandising for Trina Turk who during her 9 years with the contemporary women’s clothing company has seen first hand the effects of online store sales and technological advances on the retail industry.
The evolution of online retail has not only shaped the way consumers shop but has forced many big name brands to rethink how they produce their products in order to remain viable in our ever changing retail landscape.
“Through advances in technology we are able to tell our story or inspiration of the collection through our images on our website. Before eCommerce, we were limited to how a buyer from a department store or boutique would buy the line. It is so refreshing to be able to style the collections and tell a story through our own channels” she explains.
In recent years Trina Turk, like many fashion and lifestyle brands, has been forced to speed up their design process and shorten their production window to meet the demands of online consumers and beat their competitors to market on certain trends. But not all of the effects physical retailers are feeling from the digital marketplace are detrimental. Shifts in the digital marketplace have also created positive change, specifically when it comes to how fashion brands design.
“We make it a top priority to be able to “wardrobe” a customer with many looks. The accessibility to our customers online allows us to design collections with this in mind, making sure that we have the perfect top to layer under a jacket or the perfect printed head-to-toe set that coordinates as an all-over pattern look or can be worn back to solids.”
To Missy’s point, customer data has become the hot topic of the decade. With the birth of major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest brands now have access to more customer information than ever before. In 2017, companies spent over $40 Billion in social advertising with three quarters of that revenue belonging to Social Media Pioneers Facebook and Twitter alone.⁵
So what are brands doing with all of this information? How is it affecting their design approach now that they actually know who their customers are and have the data to back it up? While new-to-market brands are launching with a data driven design approach fashion veterans like Trina Turk are holding true to what they know best, with a modern twist of course.
On the topic Missy shared, “I don’t really think we’ve shifted our design approach. We are still designing for our core customer that we’ve had for over 23 years. She loves our patterns and optimistic California-inspired looks. The sales channels and social media platforms have really just enhanced our ability to express the inspiration of our collections and the brand itself.”
As our retail year comes to a close and we are starting to see the implementation of new technologies in the retail space such as body scanning, 3D printing and AI to name a few, the future feels exciting and terrifying simultaneously.
So where do we go from here? Our money is on predictive shopping, personalized product offerings and the subscription model but all of that could change in an instant so we’ll continue to keep our ears to the ground and our eyes open for new advancements across the retail industry as a whole.
¹Wattles, Jackie (2017). 2017 just set the all-time record for store closings. Retreived from CNN Money: https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/news/economy/store-closings-2017/index.html
²Peterson, Hayley (2018) More than 3,800 stores will close in 2018 — here’s the full list. Retrieved from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/stores-closing-in-2018-2017-12
³Fareeha, Ali (2018) A decade in review: E‑commerce sales vs. retail sales 2007‑2017. Retrieved from Digital Commerce 360: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/e-commerce-sales-retail-sales-ten-year-review/
⁴ Throughout her many years in the industry, Missy has run a successful showroom, collaborated with numerous designers and for the past nine years, has worked with Trina Turk as the Director of Merchandising. Her tenure with Trina Turk has allowed her to wear many hats — combining her love of styling, creative directing and developing collections. For as long as she can remember she has had an extreme enthusiasm for fashion. She is recognized as an innovator within the fashion industry and her desire to inspire and develop others has led her to an amazing career.
⁵Social network advertising revenue from 2014 to 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars). (2018) Retrieved from the Statistics Portal: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271406/advertising-revenue-of-social-networks-worldwide/
