Current crisis will expedite fashion retailer's digital transformation



For Ganguly of Puma, there is no doubt that there will be acceleration as everyone is now looking at the online opportunity. According to him, till the time offline has challenges in the current situation, online is going to be the go-to the channel. We need to run faster on this front and leverage e-commerce and digital, even more, going forward, Ganguly explained.

New Delhi: Fashion retailers who were already on the path of digital transformation for some time now, feels that the current Covid-19 pandemic situation will accelerate their online journey even further, said panelists during the panel discussion at RetailTech Summit organised by ETRetail.com.

The topic of discussion was "How fashion retailers will use technology in the new age of shopping" and the panelists were Amar Nagaram, CEO of Myntra, Vishak Kumar, CEO of Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, Sanjeev Mohanty, managing director South Asia, Middle East & North Africa at Levi Strauss & Co., Abhishek Ganguly, General Manager at Puma India and Southeast Asia, John Mullins, Area Vice President-Commerce Cloud at Salesforce, and Tejas Kadakia, co-Founder & Director at EasyRewardz.

According to Kumar, the digital transformation journey is not recent, but a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic sometimes makes you change gears. "I think in any case there was also a lot of force with which technology was pushing the edge on brands to become more and more digital and more towards e-commerce. And that is something which was happening anyway. It is just that an external event has accelerated the process," said Kumar.

Mohanty of Levi's echoes the same sentiment as his fellow panelist. "If you look at the digital transformation journey, most of us have undertaken it for a long time. This transformation is only going to be accelerated right now. It will be interesting to see how brands will look at the adoption as well as the acceleration of the digital transformation."

For Ganguly of Puma, there is no doubt that there will be acceleration as everyone is now looking at the online opportunity. According to him, till the time offline has challenges in the current situation, online is going to be the go-to the channel. We need to run faster on this front and leverage e-commerce and digital, even more, going forward, Ganguly explained.

"The transition is already happening. In fact, that is what we have seen in the last few weeks. The offline stores are becoming more and more partners with the online players like Myntra and we are actually bridging the gap and blurring the lines between offline and online," said Nagaram. The online-offline transition in the fashion industry during the time of this crisis happened in a much more accelerated manner, he said.

Mullins of Salesforce quoted a global study conducted by McKinsey, which found people who never shopped online before the crisis, of them more than 50 percent said they will shop online post the crisis. "In other words, convenience in the new normal has captured a number of online shoppers who never had used that medium," Mullins said. Kadakia feels it is not only about getting the customer online but to start conversational commerce. A lot of brands will start to move into mechanics where the customer will be happy to chat with the store staff and go ahead with the shopping, he said.

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