Fashion Merchandising’s Tech Toy Box
Today’s fashion merchandisers probably grew up watching Rachel Green climb the ranks of Bloomingdales and Ralph Lauren in the culture-defining show, "Friends." In the last few years, the character’s iconic pleated trousers and crop tops have made an undeniable comeback, which got us thinking — what would Rachel’s job look like if the show were on air today?
In 2023, fashion merchandisers are expected to have a pulse on fashion trends as well as technology trends. They must be as fluent in search and discovery as they are in visual merchandising. And they have to create a cohesive strategy across multiple sales and marketing channels. Sure, the demands are greater, but so are the tools at their disposal. Modern technology provides deep insights into customer behavior and forecasting, and has the power to tailor the shopping experience to meet individuals' wants and needs — things that merchandisers in the '90s attempted to figure out manually.
The Art and Science of E-Commerce Merchandising
According to Statista, online fashion sales reached $204.9 billion in the U.S. in 2022 and continue to rise. This growth gives fashion merchandisers a bigger playground to flex their creativity and bring their visions to life — and they have a toy box of technology to help them do it. Here are four brands that are leveraging tech to boost online sales in creative ways.
Revolve
E-commerce merchandising is more than how products are displayed and surfaced on an online store. It also includes mobile apps, social media, and even brick-and-mortar stores and in-person experiences. Revolve is a brand that understands its unique sales channels and tailors the shopping experience to each of them. The online retailer has become synonymous with influencer fashion and has created clever ways for shoppers to engage on social media. For example, influencers can link to a curated list of their favorite items on Revolve for shoppers to immediately add to their cart.
Images: www.instagram.com/devinbrugman
Curateur
Curateur is an online shopping community started by fashion icon Rachel Zoe. True to its name, the brand curates clothing, accessories, beauty products and homewares for its audience. The company’s curated sets are a creative way to cross-sell and upsell based on items that shoppers are interested in. These sets are displayed alongside single products within a category. The image below shows the “jewelry” category, which has individual products as well as sets that include a piece of jewelry with other items that complement it, such as a purse and lipstick. This inspires shoppers to complete their look and offers a discount for purchasing multiple items at once.
Image: www.curateur.com/collections/jewelry
Steve Madden
Steve Madden's kept a pulse on accessory and technology trends for nearly 25 years. Today, the brand highlights trending styles on its website by promoting them within other collections. For example, in “new arrivals” shoppers see a promo tile for loafers and can easily shop the trending style with the click of a button.
Image: www.stevemadden.com/collections/all-whats-new
Princess Polly
Many shoppers discover products by searching specific keywords on a brand’s website, but the quality of results can vary depending on the site’s search functionality. One site that delivers impressive results is Princess Polly, an Australian fashion brand with major adoption across the globe. Not only does the Princess Polly site show thumbnails in the dropdown results, it also provides suggestions for trending searches and related collections. These recommendations give shoppers three paths to choose from to find the best match for what they’re looking for, increasing their chances of discovering and purchasing a product.
Image: us.princesspolly.com
Crafting the Perfect Online Shopping Experience
Rachel’s role as a buyer and personal shopper has a lot of overlap with the role of a fashion merchandiser. In addition to trend forecasting and inventory management, merchandising focuses on the customer’s shopping journey. It takes business objectives, like inventory and revenue goals, into consideration and strategically displays and organizes products in a way that will influence, inspire and entice shoppers to buy.
If "Friends" were on air today, Rachel would have a pulse on fashion trends and business objectives and craft an online shopping experience to meet the demands of both. She’d take advantage of the latest technology to cross-sell and upsell, implement the best search and discovery features, and implement clever strategies for different sales channels. It’s clear that the merchandisers at Revolve, Curateur, Steve Madden, and Princess Polly have taken full advantage of the modern technology that’s available to them. We can’t wait to see how they continue to create and curate shopping experiences for their customers.
Zohar Gilad is the co-founder and CEO of Fast Simon, a site search and merchandising platform for e-commerce.
Zohar Gilad is in a high tech career spanning products, marketing, and management over 25 years at IBM, Daisy, Mercury Interactive, Precise, Cloud Power, and now Fast Simon Inc. He is an entrepreneur who enjoys creating, growing, and leading products, businesses, and companies. At Mercury, he created two categories: Load Testing with LoadRunner, and APM with Business Availability Center, and then co-founded Fast Simon Inc. to bring shopping optimization for ecommerce merchants. Used by leading fast growing brands such as Steve Madden, Figs, Natural Life and thousands of others, Fast Simon offers merchandising, search, personalization, smart collections, display merchandising optimizer, and visual discovery.
