Digitalising the wholesale channel represents a fundamental strategic opportunity for businesses. It marks a necessary evolution towards a highly efficient, inspiring, and, crucially, strategically robust B2B buying experience. This transformation directly translates into a significant reduction in the operational burden for sales teams and enhanced sales fluidity, thereby maximising market potential and profitability.
How Does This Transformation Materialise?
- Enriched Buying Experience: Redefines interaction with your clients, offering them a more dynamic, inspiring, and innovative buying experience.
- Operational Cost Optimisation: Digitalisation facilitates a substantial reduction in expenses associated with preparing and managing the entire sales cycle.
- Streamlined Sales Cycle: Shortens lead times from offer conceptualisation to presentation and purchase confirmation, improving market responsiveness.
- Strengthened Brand Image: By adopting advanced digital processes, your brand positions itself as an innovative and technological leader among distributors, consolidating its premium image.
- Data-Driven Business Intelligence: Enables access to strategic sell-in and sell-through data, complemented by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that refine product offerings.
- Demonstrable Return on Investment (ROI): Investment in wholesale channel digitalisation often generates tangible ROI within a remarkably short timeframe, frequently under 12 months.
- Adaptable and Scalable Architecture: We propose a hybrid model combining the agility of a proven SaaS platform with the flexibility of micro-applications and an open API. This architecture ensures the system can adapt to evolving processes within weeks, not years.
In essence, wholesale digitalisation transforms traditional approaches, such as face-to-face meetings and spreadsheets, into a continuous, profitable, and scalable digital channel. This empowers your team to dedicate their energy to strategic selling and reinforces the overall perception of your brand in the sector.
Wholesale Sales Process Scenario with Smart Wholesale
Our solution, Smart Wholesale, comprises two key integrated elements that work in synergy to optimise the sales cycle:
- Digital Linebook: The centralised platform for storing and managing all product information and visual content presented to your clients.
- Smart Showroom (Digital Showroom): The web interface enabling dynamic product presentations, including videos, photo galleries, product collages, and looks. It also integrates a comprehensive module for order management (creation, export, and sharing).
Usage Scenario
1. Offer Preparation
Preparing the offer for each new collection involves continuous gathering of product information from various sources:
- PIM (Product Information Management): For ongoing product information.
- Design/Product Team: To define products and their main features (with a 3-6 month outlook).
- Merchandising/Marketing: For planning and availability of associated promotional content (videos, photo galleries, looks, etc.).
Analysing and managing this information to identify and cover potential gaps is crucial. This includes:
- Images: Supported by AI tools.
- Product Data.
- Samples: This is a particularly complex task, as product offerings are often not defined with sufficient lead time for physical sample availability.
Given that the collection and preparation of this information (both product and promotional) is a continuous process spanning several months, a flexible and easy-to-manage system is indispensable. This system must allow for real-time tracking of available information and pending elements. All this information is centralised and efficiently managed from the Digital Linebook.
2. Strategic Client Information
Having detailed client information is fundamental for effective sales. This includes individual purchase histories and aggregated data from the entire client base. This holistic view enables the sales team to conduct practical analysis on which products have performed best and what emerging trends are observed, serving as a solid foundation for developing personalised proposals and sales forecasting. All this strategic information is accessible from the Digital Linebook.
3. Preparation for Sales Sessions
Before each sales session with a distributor or franchisee, whether in a physical showroom or an online environment, optimising the following aspects is essential:
- Offer Personalisation: Quickly and dynamically identify specific products to offer each client, based on their purchase history, the new collection, and seasonal forecasts.
- Sample Management: Given the complexity of obtaining physical garment samples, it is recommended to select a limited quantity of the most representative or visually appealing products. The rest of the offering will be complemented with high-quality digital samples (photographs), presented during the sales session.
- Creation of Inspirational Sessions: Design impactful sales experiences in physical showrooms using 85-inch interactive screens, projecting inspirational material (videos, image galleries, look and product canvases). It is possible to create personalised sales narratives per client or theme. This functionality is fully managed from the Smart Showroom.
4. Sales Sessions
- Physical Showroom: In the physical showroom, interactive screens allow for a hybrid presentation combining brand inspirational material and digital samples with the exhibition of physical product samples. Clients can interact directly with the screen to obtain additional information about garments or, if a prior selection has been made, modify it by adding or removing products.
- Order Management in the Showroom: The garment selection process (models, quantities, size curves, etc.) is carried out interactively on the same screen. Thanks to the previously available information, the sales team can propose data-driven alternatives (such as cross-selling, historical sales, or best-sellers), facilitating a more complete and strategic purchase.
- Order Confirmation and Processing: Once the purchase selection is complete, the order can be confirmed immediately or securely shared with the client. This is done via an email that includes a private link, allowing the client to access their selection, make final modifications, and confirm the purchase. After confirmation, the order can be exported in standard formats (CSV, PDF, etc.) or, if an API integration exists, sent directly to existing order management systems (B2B, ERP, etc.).
- Online Sales Session: For online sales sessions, direct web access facilitates a complete presentation of the offering (videos, products, etc.). The client will have the ability to interact with the proposal and select products similarly to how they would in a physical showroom with an interactive screen.
In summary, implementing this process with Smart Wholesale not only optimises current operations but also lays the groundwork for continuous and adaptable evolution of your wholesale channel. By centralising information and digitalising interactions, we provide the control and agility necessary to capitalise on new market opportunities and ensure sustained growth.
The Solution We Propose
The hybrid solution we propose comprises two fundamental elements: Digital Linebook and Smart Showroom.
Digital Linebook
A Digital Linebook is an interactive online catalogue that presents collections and products in a visually appealing manner with detailed information. It goes far beyond a simple PDF, transforming the sales and management experience. It is a linebook accessible to clients and sales teams anywhere in the world.
What is a Digital Linebook and what does it offer?
- High-Quality Visual Presentation: Displays your products with high-resolution images, videos, and interactive options for detailed product and look visualisation.
- Detailed and Dynamic Information: Each product includes comprehensive descriptions, specifications, pricing, and any other relevant details.
- Immediate Updates: Allows for instant addition, deletion, or modification of items without incurring printing costs or logistical delays.
- Global Accessibility: Clients and sales teams can access it from any location and device, facilitating international and remote sales.
- Interactive Experience: Extends beyond a static catalogue, incorporating multimedia and customisable content for greater immersion.
- Integration and Personalisation: The Digital Linebook can integrate with existing management systems (such as PIM, ERP), enabling a smoother experience and the ability to personalise offers for specific clients.
- Data Insights: Offers the capability to track product interest to refine sales strategies, optimise inventory, and make data-driven decisions.
- Secure and Responsive Design: Ensures a fluid and secure experience on any device (computer, tablet, mobile, or interactive screens).
In essence, a Digital Linebook elevates the presentation of your collections, transforming it into a strategic tool for the wholesale and B2B channel that enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and strengthens brand image.
Smart Showroom (Digital Showroom)
A digital showroom in the fashion industry is an online platform designed for brands to present their collections to wholesale buyers (B2B) in an interactive and personalised way, without relying on a physical space. These tools have gained crucial relevance in the industry by facilitating product visualisation, streamlining order management, and paving the way for expansion into new markets.
What defines a digital showroom?
It is a digital environment where brands exhibit their products through interactive catalogues, high-quality images, videos, and other multimedia content. This format allows buyers to explore collections, place orders, and manage their accounts from anywhere, at any time, offering an immersive and flexible experience.
Key Strategic Benefits of Adopting a Digital Showroom:
- Global Accessibility: Eliminates geographical barriers, enabling brands to connect with buyers worldwide and expand their reach without the limitations of a physical space.
- Experience Personalisation: Brands can tailor product presentations and commercial proposals according to each client’s specific preferences and needs, offering an exclusive service.
- Order Management Efficiency: Selection and purchase processes are simplified and accelerated thanks to intuitive visual interfaces and integrated management tools, optimising workflow.
- Cost Reduction: By minimising or eliminating the need for physical samples and printed catalogues, significant savings are achieved on expenses associated with traditional sales.
- Sustainability: Contributes to reducing environmental impact by decreasing travel and the use of physical materials in the supply chain.
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