The Game of Disruption. What is in store for fashion retail?

Cloud Retail Software: The Enabler to Disruption and Survival

Fashion retail is at the height of disruption and with Amazon’s recent announcement, the game of disruption is about to get even more challenging…. enter Amazon Prime Wardrobe.

The magnitude of this disruption is unprecedented; fashion retail is among a wide array of sectors fighting the onslaught. In fact, the retail store of the past may well be dead, as evidenced by the ongoing trend of thousands of shop closures over the last decades — capped by several new rapid-fire rounds of closure announcements in early 2017 and a number of big brands this year seeing potential dark days.

What will disrupters such as Amazon do next as they go about their remit of changing the shape of consumer behaviour and winning the new, impatient, tech savvy and ultra-convenience shopper these disrupters have created?

Be it Amazon, Netflix, or Uber, they’ve done so by finding the ideal combination of convenience, price, speed and variety that best appeals to consumers. With an on-going strategy to continually expand service offerings well beyond their original value propositions, we can expect to see more and more change.

The results speak for themselves: Uber chalked up its first billion global rides in a six-year time span; its second billion rides took a scant six months.

Netflix killed off Blockbuster and is now streaming 125 million hours of content worldwide each day, some of it original.

Behind every one of these disrupting forces is a strategic Cloud technology foundation designed to give them the not only true scalability and agility but critically the power to enable real-time, ubiquitous, visibility of data at any operational or consumer touch point.

It is their advantage point and one progressive retailers determined to survive have or are in the process of migrating to, enabling the ultimate omni-experience and agility to introduce new heightened services and adapt to consumer change.

Cloud EPoS and Retail Software Foundation

Despite the dark threat of these online super powers, the concept of shopping will never change but the way we shop will. While the store of the past may be dead, retailers are already adapting to a new retail environment that is a hybrid blend of the digital and physical worlds merged into additional social and sensory experiences, underpinned by an intelligent and holistic Cloud EPoS and retail system foundation.

In an online fuelled consumer world, retailers are having to rethink ways of creating combined and converged experiences to create compelling shopping journeys to combat the online super powers such as Amazon.

In this retail landscape of the future — a combination of physical, digital, and complementary service offerings — shops tailored by location and demographics become part of the consumer’s broader shopping experience.

The Physidigital Shopping Experience

And experience is the key word here. The physical fashion retail store must have a reason for the consumer to leave the comfort of their home to shop — an experience within its four walls that not only competes with the convenience and ease of online shopping but also offers other options consumers might choose to spend their time on, such as movies, sporting events or dining out.

Traditionally a Pure Play ecommerce fashion retailer, Miss Guided knows all too well the power of this physical experience and brand power, reflected into their massive instore investments on introduction of offline marketing. Offering dramatic in-store designs, vibrant environments to reflect its online brand and partnership with powered by Doddle with the aim of offering every aspect of convenience within its omni-channel experience.

Time is running out for the bricks and mortar fashion retailers to become part of this disruption and not be destroyed by it.

Fashion retailers small and large must ensure they have the very best technology and Cloud EPoS and retail software platform fit for purpose to deliver to new consumer demands.

Every fashion retailer should be considering:

1. Loyalty – to keep buyers coming back across every channel

2. Fulfilment – processes for cost, delivery and convenience optimisation

3. Assortment – the right mix of in-store offerings physically and digitally

4. Platform – effortless, cross channel real time interaction

5. Innovation – continued and scalable shopping experience development

6. Diversification –hospitality, entertainment and leisure retail experiences

What Can You Do That Amazon Can Not?

By addressing and challenging the new reality fashion retailers only need to look at Dixons Carphone Warehouse and how it is transforming itself by asking itself “How can we end up making Amazon redundant?” resulting in rationalisation and a 3 in 1 store approach, exceeding in customer services Amazon cannot deliver, expanding same-day services, optimising delivery and bolstering its multi-channel retail offer.

Change is the only constant it’s just the pace of change in retail that is rattling the industry.

The next three years will defiantly be a time for survival of the fittest. Amazon will not destroy fashion retail, it’s simply just driving the delivery of the consumer’s need for speed, convenience and choice. It is the catalyst not the cause.

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