By Carley Johnson Brand Growth Brand Success February 17, 2021

Which fashion brands have a successful omnichannel business?

In this short video, I will be talking through why it is such an important sales tactic, giving examples of 5 brands that have successfully used and profited from this approach.

Finally, stay tuned to the end, where I will talk through ways that you can become an omnichannel fashion brand.

Prefer to watch?

Here’s that video!

So what does omnichannel actually mean?

So pretty much omnichannel is talking about your communication channel and your sales channel, and it’s all about the touchpoints with your customer. So it’s how you bring the two together as a means.

To sell your product. So an omnichannel method, it can be numerous different ways. So it can be via wholesale. It can be via the marketplace. It can be via stores. It can be via your logistics options. So having drop point collection points, and it’s also your director consumer channel. So it’s a strategy that brings all of these together and you’re giving multiple different touchpoint options again for your customer.

So a lot of brands can’t afford to acquire a huge customer base. It takes a lot of marketing spend and a lot of time. So using an omnichannel approach is actually a fantastic opportunity for you to leverage a big platform, say like Zalando or like Amazon, and actually use their customer base that reaped as a means to grow your audience.

So it’s really, really quite a powerful strategy to implement for your fashion brands. So pretty much by having an omnichannel approach, you’re actually having your products available anywhere at any time to customers in the world, which again is amazing.

So in short, omnichannel is more channels, more revenue.

"So IDC study found that customers who shop across multi-channels actually bring 30% higher lifetime value."

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So let's look at some examples.

Let’s take Nike for example.

So back in like 2013, 81% of Nike’s business came from wholesale. So that was like the main omnichannel approach used. They used this to their benefit, to the point now that they are, have changed strategies, they’ve benefited from that.

And they have now pivoted to just focusing on their customer. And actually, because they’ve built up such a huge customer base, now they don’t necessarily need to be using the wholesale marketplace channels. Like they used to. So back in 2017 that they sold an estimate through an estimated 30,000 retailers, but now they only have 40 strategic retail partners.

So this is an example of how Nike really used it to gain that fan base. They’ve not refined it back to 40 and then methods now with that customers are very much direct to consumer for this. Through the training club app and through the likes of we chat in China.

So by working in omnichannel, you can actually reach numerous different customers by using different channels.

So you can approach the customer that likes to shop online.

You can approach the customer that just simply wants that store experience,

or you can reach the customer that likes to shop on the multi-brand retailers.

So again, the omnichannel strategy gives you numerous different options in which to grow and be more profitable through your reach.

Retail gold!

In 2019, Galleries, Lafayette opened a new store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. So this is a prime location. This is like a retail gold. And there were numerous different brands. So one in London, for example, Halia Bartley, they were in that store.

They were in that opening and that’s actually an opportunity that a new brand like they are, they would never be able to afford that prime, um, retails. So they are actually leveraging, a well-known department store as a means to be in front of numerous different tourists and customers that come down the every single year Omnichannel provides quick means of achieving volumes.

And let’s not forget that. So by being in these numerous different retailers multi-brand department stores online, like Zalando, it actually means that you can grow and achieve volume a lot quicker.

Multibrand retailer opportunities

vip.com is a platform online and they deliver an omnichannel experience and how they do it is how they actually help retailers connecting to potential leads.

So this is yeah, a fantastic platform for brands to reach a customer base that they would never have been able to. So how they do it is that they actually use the geolocation of their customers. And then they’ll actually connect the customer to the correct brand in that geo-location. So that works really well for the customer as much as it does the brand.

So that’s really great customer service and a great communication channel to the customers in specific locations.

How to use key events to increase your store sales.

Let’s look at Topshop and let’s look at London fashion week.

So back then Topshop did a fantastic campaign. They were on billboards all around London that were actually within a 10-minute walking distance to their stores. And they were actually live-updating these boards based on tweets and whatever the tweet was. For example, colour blocking, they would then show images of the shoppable items that were available in the store.

The store 10 minutes away for customers to go and shop. So this is a way of easing appetizing, a different channel of communication and an event and bringing it all back to their store to allow customers to purchase. So that’s a really strong way to use an omnichannel approach.

Create the best customer experience!

Benefit Cosmetics Brow Bar. We’ve probably all been to their brow bar right?

It is a fantastic means to actually advertise and show off those products directly.

So they have pop-up browse stores and different department stores, and you can simply go and have your brows done. And this is actually a way that you can be serviced, have amazing customer service, have a great experience on also use that product.

So it’s a fantastic method to increase sales. And again, show off that product.

Omnichannel ideas you can implement for your fashion brand.

So now I’ve given you some examples of brands that have had a successful approach. What are some ideas that you could be using?

So an omnichannel idea for you could be that you have in store returned stations, all have returned stations around your local town, city, country.
Other things could be live streaming. So that’s simply another means by which to communicate to your customers and hopefully sell your product.
You could do virtual try-on boutiques. So this is a method that’s obviously virtually online and. So this can use, um, like an avatar character to try on your claiming.
Also, a similar one is that you could do virtual appointments. So you could do styling appointments as a means to have a new sales channel, for a customer. That’s actually very customer experience based.
You can use text messages, which is on the increase as a method of marketing, and that’s again, a different communication channel to your customer.
And also you can consider the obvious you could consider wholesale marketplace as a means to add a different sales channel into your customer.
And the final one I’m going to mention goes, without saying you should definitely have social channels as a means to sell to your customer.

So hopefully this inspires you, but this year in 2020, you really need to be focusing on an omnichannel approach.

And hopefully, now you’ve got some ideas and clear ways of which you can actually do this and achieve it.

So if you want any help with this. Happily reach out. Leave your comments below or email me directly.

Thank you so much.