The Future of Fashion Buying

Katerina Ilieva is a highly experienced, strategic senior buying professional. Buying for global top-ranked Department Stores (Printemps, Harvey Nichols) as well as stand-alone mono brands (Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Chloe, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Loro Piana to name a few). She has a deep knowledge of the GCC retail landscape, its practices and niche challenges. KATERINA ILIEVA

WHAT IS A FASHION BUYER?

Buying Manager - Luxury Fashion DOHA, QATAR

Being a fashion buyer may seem all glitz and glamour. In fact, hard work, long hours and relevant skills are required to become a successful Fashion Buyer. Fashion buying is one of the most important retail functions. Done properly, it positively improves sales, margins, overall profitability and the ongoing success of the retailer. Maximizing sales is the ultimate goal of fashion buying in the retail business. You must balance between art and science, have a strong sense of numbers and have a keen eye. You’ve got to be creative. FASHION BUYING & COVID-19

Normally, the job of a fashion buyer requires extensive travelling, visiting showrooms and attending fashion shows. Pre-pandemic, buyers would scout new trends by visiting stores and meeting emerging designers. Fashion shows used to be the primary way for a brand to showcase a new product. Brands have traditionally followed a universal buying calendar when releasing new collections. Global pandemic restrictions have temporarily eliminated the possibility of gathering together, whether for large-scale fashion shows or intimate showroom appointments. That inability of buyers to review new collections in person has forced the industry to get creative. For an industry that prides itself on creativity and innovation, fashion is usually notoriously slow to change the way it operates or adopt new technology. Think about how long it took for many luxury brands to launch e-commerce. However, COVID-19 has propelled the fashion industry to adopt new norms and digitalize the process to make it faster than ever before.

DIGITAL BUYING & VIRTUAL SELLING

If 2020 unleashed numerous challenges, 2021 accelerated the future strategies inspired by the innovations undertaken to meet those challenges. The most effective and productive innovation of these times has been the unprecedented use of technology. Irrespective of where one is placed in the fashion value chain, the need for technology has never been as compelling as it is today. Be it the area of fashion manufacturing, distribution or retailing, no retail business can succeed without the edge that technology offers. Digital marketplaces have now proven their relevance in the fashion industry. Platforms like JOOR and NuOrder assist brands and fashion buyers by creating an online space that showcases products, using high-resolution imagery and an interactive user interface.

Buyers are invited to visit the showroom at their convenience and explore the product selection visually. They can easily sort and subdivide products by colour, size, category, or other tags and build a digital shopping cart to place an order. NuOrder saw 125% growth driven by the effects of the pandemic. A 224% increase in users of their Retail Assortments Platform. An 87% increase in the number of orders placed by retailers year over a year certainly indicates the high growth of these platforms for fashion buyers in the retail industry. Joor has seen a 44% increase in the number of retailers using its platform and a 412% increase in visits to brands’ virtual showrooms in the back half of 2020. In February of 2021, Joor saw a 106% increase in wholesale transactions as compared to February 2020. The founders of Joor and NuOrder see a revolution finally taking place with fashion wholesale. THE FUTURE OF FASHION BUYING: HYBRID APPROACH

Fashion is a tactile industry. Fashion Buyers need to touch and feel what we are going to stock in our stores. This has been the main pain point during the past two years of digital buying. It is very difficult to see the drape in a dress, the sheerness of a fabric or the print on a top on Zoom or via NuOrder.

NuOrder or Joor allow us to efficiently and effectively view the collections. We intend to be back in showrooms once it is safe to do so. The in-person showroom experience is important for Fashion Buyers. Very important for us to understand the overall collection, to see and feel the merchandise and individual garments in real-time. As the fashion industry now moves toward a “new normal,” We believe the future lies in a hybrid approach of virtual and physical showrooms. We don’t think we will ever go ‘back to normal normal.’ We will certainly use technology more often, whether for a product knowledge seminar for top Fashion Buyers across the country or quick check-ins with brands on their merchandise in development.