The ClearSale team just returned from another successful Fashion Digital trade show and conference in New York that took place on November 11, 2016. This year’s show assembled some of the biggest brands in online fashion and e-retailing, with top names like Avon.com, Harry Winston, Google, Fendi and PopSugar in attendance, just to name a few. With a keen focus on marketing, technology, industry trends and business growth, the conference gave ClearSale the perfect opportunity to educate the 600+ top-level executives from today’s leading fashion brands about why sometimes a customized e-commerce platform is vital to a business’ success. Some names discussed were: Shopify, Woo Commerce, OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop and so on.
Rafael Lourenco, VP of US Operations for ClearSale, spoke along with Kimberly Gort, E-Commerce Manager of Schutz Shoes, about the growing pains of e-retailing. He and Kimberly discussed the challenges faced by e-commerce stores making the switch from an all-in-one platform to a customized one in a presentation entitled “Growing Pains: Growing Retailers May be Living the E-retailing Dream, But Many are Still Looking for the Right Size E-commerce Platform.”
In this presentation, Rafael and Kimberly discussed the necessity of determining business strategy prior to deciding on a platform. For example, retailers with their own line of branded products will have different needs than those looking to ship product from multiple vendors. Additional factors, like the size of a retailer’s product lineup, time sensitivity and budget must also be taken into consideration.
Though it is exciting to see a business grow rapidly, Rafael and Kimberly warned that with that kind of growth comes the looming risk of fraud. Once a platform has been determined and a business is in the process of expansion, manual review of potentially fraudulent orders becomes a time-consuming task that takes employees’ time away from the core of the business. It can also leave shoppers feeling frustrated as a result of delays or falsely declined orders, an issue that was faced by Schultz Shoes prior to partnering with ClearSale. Once Schultz made the switch to ClearSale’s fraud management services, sales increased tremendously and it allowed Kimberly the chance to focus her business knowledge elsewhere as the company continues its rapid expansion. Rafael and Kimberly were excited to be able to share their experiences with the attendees and to see the kind of interest and post-presentation discussion that it garnered.
Our team had a great time at the event as it offered them the opportunity to share ideas and expertise with high-caliber colleagues about some of the most pressing issues of the industry. We’ve seen that the industry is experiencing a shift in marketing to more non-traditional strategies such as community building and engagement. For retailers, the focus should be on providing a real, quality product and taking customer feedback seriously. Service providers need to give clients extensive training (called onboarding) to ensure the most success when using the program. Above all, everyone needs to find ways to incentivize customers to become brand ambassadors in order to increase organic, word-of-mouth marketing.
With so many changes happening in the industry, it is vital to choose a partner that has your best interests at heart and your protection as a top priority. Contact us today to learn more about how ClearSale can be that partner: sales@clear.sale.