What does 2024 have in store for retailers, brands, and their manufacturing partners, and how can your supply chain perform its best?
ECOMMERCE GROWTH
TREND Online sales growth. Ten percent or greater online sales growth is forecasted for 2024, according to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer.
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Advanced Omnichannel Merchandise Planning. The best merchandise plans anticipate customer demand at the regional, local and targeted demographic levels. In 2024, it will be a competitive advantage to drill deep into sales data and respond to customer cues. For brands and manufacturers serving retail stores, wholesale, catalog and eCommerce channels, advanced planning solutions make it easier and more efficient to create, review, manage, merge and adjust plans — connecting the dots between buying, merchandising, design, allocation, financial planning, costing and production.
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Emerging Technologies. 3D visualization and generative artificial intelligence (AI) promise to play greater roles in retailing. Shoppers will see more 3D, augmented reality and virtual try-on tools. Product teams will experiment with CoPilot, Chat GPT and other AI assistants to summarize online product reviews and draft product descriptions. In addition to greater productivity, businesses can harvest valuable information to feed back into their supply chains. For example, if 3D dressing room sessions and product reviews expose fit and quality problems, teams have an opportunity to fix them. They can adjust designs, change materials, discuss issues with suppliers, update product specifications and revise operator instructions. All of this can be done digitally and rapidly with integrated product lifecycle management (PLM) and shop floor control (SFC) solutions.
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eCommerce Connectors. Online shopping requires excellent customer service across both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Order management, available-to-sell inventory updates and logistics must run smoothly with unerring accuracy. The only way to achieve this is with automation. CGS BlueCherry® eCommerce Connectors provide seamless integration to online shopping sites and platforms. In addition, Applications Programming Interface (API), Third-Party Logistics Provider (3PL) and Extended Production/Logistics Modules automate and eliminate manual processes, manage orders, update products and inventory, and provide immediate shipping information to customers, plus frictionless, fast fulfillment.
PRODUCT PERSONALIZATION
TREND: Hyper-personalization. It’s more than monogramming in the age of influencers and AI! This year retailers, brands and their suppliers will race to make products and collections tailored to very specific consumer groups.
SUPPLY CHAIN CONSIDERATIONS
Collaborative Planning. Retailers and brands have ever-larger collections of consumer data. They are tracking searches, views, shopping baskets, sales and returns. They want to use it to promote hyper-personalized product offerings to narrowly targeted shopper sets. Popular YouTubers and social media influencers are curating their favorite looks, brands and products. If their followers like what they see, they buy. How can companies hone supply chain processes to stay current with what’s trending? There is an opportunity to open style ideation and line development processes to greater collaboration with more stakeholders. For instance, why not invite a GenZ influencer to preview new concepts, welcoming feedback while it’s still early enough to finesse collections? At the same time, retail merchandising partners can weigh in on their product needs for different categories, and suppliers can offer their expertise on manufacturability. For example, what factories have capacity to make small lots of a niche collection? Technologies such as B2B eCommerce, digital product catalogs, PLM and SFC support deeper collaboration.
Digital Transformation. So much of fashion’s environmental impact is due to materials production and processing. This is why it’s so important to prioritize sustainability at the design and product development stages. Also, the closer to market businesses can work, the better their odds for successfully satisfying demand instead of overproducing and missing the mark. Garments in landfills are an unfortunate reflection of wasted water, materials and energy. Digital design and development processes reduce physical sampling rounds and related material consumption and transportation. Centralized data management makes it easier to maintain updated sustainable fabric libraries, vendor compliance scorecards and accurate production and operator pay records.
Supply Chain Visibility. Preferred suppliers are those with strong supply chain visibility and environmental, social and governance (ESG) processes and accountability. Connected supply chain technology streamlines and automates activities such as mapping supplier relationships/locations and generating accurate chain-of-custody documentation.