The fashion industry is surely undergoing large-scale changes. This is because of the direct rise in technology and its impact on consumer’s behavior. Digital transformation is a means by which the brand’s reputation can be protected in a complex and uncertain environment. Nowadays, fashion companies strategically tailor the consumer experiences and allow the customer to have a hand at them. The ultimate challenge for any fashion company is to have a digital transformation in every aspect of its organizational culture. 

Digitisation in fashion industry: 

The fashion industry drives a significant part of the global economy, be it global discount retailers or exclusive luxury brands. Fashion is one of the most challenging fields that is expected to be highly impacted by the global economic changes as well as any distinct industrial trends that take place. 

In order to sustain the pressure for growth and cost efficiency, many fashion brands have started to improve their speed to market by initiating a series of initiatives. These initiatives are drawn in order to implement sustainable innovation in the core product designs, manufacturing, and various supply chain processes.

One of the key challenges for a fashion brand is that with time they lag behind their consumers’ expectations. Nowadays, the role of the consumer has shifted from being a passive observance to an enabled dominance. They are no longer content with simply buying fashion products. Now, they are in power because of exponential digital technology growth. 

Consumers now look forward to interacting, belonging and influencing the brands from which they buy. It’s not just only about buying a fashion product, more than that it is about showing the fashion product to the public. Therefore, the vast majority of consumers use digital marketing channels before they actually buy something. One single digital search can easily influence their decision. 

How is The Industry Changing?

These changes particularly mean that becoming a digitally-savvy brand is no longer a separate entity. Instead, digitization is meant to increase the entire consumer-brand relationship. New standards of services and experiences are being set and it is essentially about moving away from being just a product brand to becoming a brand that shapes and implements consumer-centric propositions. Thus, it is advised that even the legacy businesses with analog systems should turn themselves into fashion communication by digital marketing.

Though, many brands are still trying to come around the fact of fashion communication via digital marketing. While venturing out doing new stuff, the brand heritage and identity is considered to be at stake. Given that what’s at stake, it is very essential to work delicately and smartly towards your goal. A misaligned digital offering can actually widen the digital gap and pose a severe threat to the brand’s reputation. Therefore, you always need to be ready for everything that comes on your way. 

Reputational Risk Involving Protecting the Brand in Times of Change:

It can take efforts of many years to build a successful brand name, but only a short time to destroy it. Fashion brands should always be ready to respond to any issues of uncertainty, risk, and reputation. 

In a world of increasing complexity, brands will need to maintain a balanced growth with their plans and strategies. Several factors that are contributing to this environment are: 

• Evolving regulation
• Social media communications
• More consumer channels
• Broader geographies
• Faster risks

It is therefore essential for the companies to have an instant risk management system. Digital transformation is one of those means of a risk management system that manages the reputational risks of the company. Digital transformation for a fashion brand means re-imagining how shopping can be wisely done in a digital world and how one can efficiently attract their customers to do the same.

Digital transformation is also about challenging and changing the already existing perception about what a company is, does and says, in order to have increasing relevance to the consumers. While, the shift towards the digital presence is real and growing but still the vast majority of fashion brands are still driven by offline physical channels. It might remain extremely on the top for some fashion brands as the geographical location might be a capturing factor for them. But now, the key enabler for the success of a fashion brand is through digital presence.

What is Digital Clienteling?

Digital clienteling is all about delivering a personalized customer experience across all multiple channels in order to have improved conversion rates and revenues. There is a bulk of information stored about your consumer in the digital domain. A fashion brand can easily achieve its aimed goal by wisely using the information available to them. 

Digital Transformation – Getting it Right: 

In order to achieve digital transformation, many fashion companies take a fragmented approach. They often restrict themselves to an individual project or a program that is capable of only affecting a few people. This kind of digital transformation in fashion communication might only affect a small number of departments that would only lead to small returns. Therefore, it is essential to understand that digital transformation needs to have a wholesome impact on the consumer’s perception of the fashion brand. 

Finding the right balance between making bets and anticipated outcomes is important. The right balance between placing bets and provoking fast results with innovative ideas would build a solid ground for a digital transformation in the fashion brand. In this, the challenge is not just about the power of analytics, data managing, brand managing, reputational risk management or even bringing the digital transformation. These all ingredients have to be taken care of while aiming for good fashion communication via digital marketing. 
We at JD Institute make sure to impart better knowledge about how effective fashion communication via digital presence can be a strong asset for your fashion brand and company. We make sure you get a hang of how effectively fashion communication works and how far your brand can go with it. This has to be essentially taught so that you leave no stones unturned while you are working in the fashion industry.