Think Consulting Group director and former Supre international brand manager Catherine Taouk recently penned an explosive blog on how Australian brands are losing their way. In this series, she names her innovators.
Innovative Business Model
As we mentioned earlier, being innovative in the fashion industry doesn’t mean a focus on new styles, a new range or new fabrics that make up a garment, but exploring beyond aesthetics and into injecting an innovative culture in the business model that drives your fashion business.
The PAS Group is one of these businesses that have developed an innovative business model to sustain the challenges in the industry.
The key differentiating factors that sets the group apart from its competitors is uniqueness in design and market positioning of their brands.
Brands like Review and Metalicus represent an authentic originally designed and developed Australian product, which offers regular inputs of new product to their niche market on a weekly basis.
Breakaway and Black Pepper brands are focused on a mature demographic and have created a uniqueness in their specialisation to the older consumer.
Designworks which designs and supplies branded, licensed and house branded products is one of the largest of its kind in Australia.
Designworks’ unique proposition consists of a high caliber of skilled team members, the quality of their design, strong marketing support of their brands and licenses, and speed to market- essential to stay ahead in today’s transient market place.
In terms of innovation of design and brand uniqueness, the PAS Group appears to be at the leading edge of the fashion industry in Australia.
Innovative Technology
After speaking with Simon McDonald from Gooddata, which launched this year, it’s clear that a one-stop solution is what companies are yearning for. Gooddata, in a nutshell, merges all online, offline, omni channel information into one hub and translates it into reporting that is transparent for company owners keen on understanding the details of their business.
Sitting on a dashboard, housing content from their foot-fall in a store, to traced data from hit wise rankings, email communication, online sales tracking, drawing from multiple platforms and mashing up the data and churning out key business influences to drive change and innovation.
You only have to open a newspaper or e- source to read news heralding the latest prodigy in the retail marketing space, omni channel retailing.
The word retailing is no longer synonymous to a physical shop front, but more broadly refers to a platform that enables you to sell your products or services from.
Island Pacific has developed an incredible omni channel solution (OCS) promising to “make customers the focus of all your retail channels.”
It helps retailers improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations and meet the expectations of an increasingly mobile and demanding consumer.
It provides for real time availability and fulfilment of stock, available across all platforms and channels such as web, in-store Point of Sale, kiosk, warehouse, head
office, or mobile Point of Sale - thereby servicing the consumers' needs based on their terms and lifestyle.
The full Omni Channel benefits of the entire suite of OCS has not been fully realised by retailers in Australia at this stage, however the likes of Glue Store, Ally Fashion, David Lawrence, Jigsaw, Millers and Katies have implemented segments of OCS – with the ability to view real time stock and sales, as well as centralised real time voucher and customer validation and processing.
Its early days yet, however using innovative technology to improve the customer’s shopping experience is proving to have a positive impact on business.
Online is finally being pushed by the major department stores as a strong priority, with David Jones highlighting that a multi-channel shopping experience is not about the technology but rather about the actual brand offering.
One sure to impress piece of content that DJs has created is an interactive shopable video where users can click during various stages of the video to a direct link to the
sales page to make a purchase of the styles modelled.