Fast-growing fashion brands are powered by a host of different software. From your ecommerce platform and ERP to your marketplaces and warehouse system, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
When it comes to uploading and managing your products, each product needs to be updated across all your channels. For example, if the price of one of your products changes, you’ll need to go in and update that price on your ecommerce platform, ERP and any marketplaces you’re selling on. Not only is manually duplicating this data incredibly time-consuming, but it leaves businesses open to human error.
The fix: A single point to manage products
For lingerie brands looking to scale, spending hours manually updating products isn’t an option. With a range as large and diverse as lingerie, having a single place to manage products is essential.
By connecting your ecommerce platform and iPaaS Vendors marketplaces to your business management software or ERP, you create a central product management point. Acting as the hub for your company’s software, any updates done through your ERP will feed through to your other sales channels, saving you and your employees heaps of time.
Stock availability
Lingerie brands carry a huge range of products, all with multiple variants. From cup size and band size to different colour choices, each product can have hundreds of different variations. To keep stock levels manageable, brands usually only order a small amount of each size. Otherwise, their warehouse would be bursting at the seams.
With such a small amount of stock available for each product, overselling is a big risk for lingerie brands. And manually updating stock levels across your sales channels isn’t feasible, especially for fast-growing brands.
The fix: Automated data syncs
The key to a good shopping experience is easy order fulfilment, which makes overselling a brand’s worst nightmare. That’s why automated data syncing is essential.
By integrating your warehouse software with your ecommerce platform, you open up an automated channel of communication between your systems. Through live inventory figures and automatic stock updates, you can keep your stock levels up to date across all your sales channels – whether that’s your website, Farfetch, eBay, Amazon or Etsy. By eliminating the need for manual input tasks, you free up resources and reduce the risk of errors.
With the Patchworks integration platform, you also have the option to pause your data syncs, enabling your website to manage stock levels during peak sales periods like Black Friday. When the storm of orders has passed, you can restart your data automation.
Order processing
In a world of Amazon Prime and same-day delivery, products are getting to our front doors faster than ever. Consumers expect brands to offer next-day delivery options, along with standard shipping options of no more than five working days. If these options aren’t offered, or worse, orders arrive late, your repeat purchase rates will plummet.
The fix: Synchronised orders
By integrating your pick, pack and dispatch software with your ecommerce platform and ERP, your customer’s order gets sent to your warehouse immediately. The order can then be processed, packed and sent out to customers, with synchronised order processing keeping your customer informed every step of the way. This speedy delivery time helps to increase your overall customer satisfaction, boosting repeat purchase rates and getting your brand those all-important positive reviews.
Returns management
Just like any other fashion niche, lingerie can be subject to high return rates. On average, clothing retailers report return rates of up to 40% for online sales. Without an effective returns process, these returns can cause havoc in your warehouse – and affect your customer relationship.
The fix: A customer-focused returns process
Most fast-growing companies, particularly in fashion, find managing returns in-house impossible. That’s why brands tend to invest in a returns management software like ReBOUND.
ReBOUND is a customer-focused returns system, making returns as simple as possible for the both you and the consumer. By managing the entire return journey and keeping your customers informed with tracking updates, you have time to process quicker refunds – earning your customers’ trust. And with intelligent reporting on a single IT platform, you can see exactly what, how and why returns are being sent back.