Technology used in Wholesale Fashion
In such a fast-paced industry, fashion companies must use technology to be more efficient in their operational activities. Through my internship at a showroom as a Sales Operations and Showroom intern, I learned how the company uses technology to speed up processes in the front and back end of operations. Although technology varies between showrooms, I will be discussing the technology my showroom used to be more efficient. In my showroom, they used three main technology platforms: Showroom Exchange, NuOrder, as well as Joor.
Showroom Exchange is a Customer Relationship Management Software that stores all the customers’ information including past purchases and how easy it was to work with the customers. Because my company has thousands of potential and past customers stored in their Showroom Exchange, employees have been trying to weed out which potential customers to not prospect by researching the customers. I had the opportunity to research 100 boutiques a week and look at their social media presence, selling price, type of clothes sold, and which brands they already sold to decide whether the Sales team should try prospecting the boutiques. By doing this, I was able to help the Sales team save time by not selling to boutiques that have a low chance of buying our clothes.
Another technology platform I used a lot as a Sales Operations and Showroom Intern was NuOrder. NuOrder is a sales platform for wholesale customers. In NuOrder, boutiques and fashion companies can look through the clothes we are selling for current and future seasons and buy our clothes without physically coming into our showroom. NuOrder helps our customers save time because they can browse our vast collection of clothes and narrow down searches based on brands, colors, price point, sizes, quantity in stock, and shipping date. Furthermore, NuOrder serves as inspiration for customers because the marketing team has created lookbooks on current clothes being sold. Thus, customers can more easily visualize how our products can be styled. NuOrder also allows my company to save time because the Sales team will not have to go on the road as often to sell our clothes and accessories to customers. NuOrder also helps ensure that all samples are placed where they should be. Because my company has three store locations in Los Angeles, New York, and Texas, my showroom must coordinate which samples are where so that each showroom has equal chances in selling the products. Some of our clients that we work with only provide us one set of samples per season, so it is vital that we know where the samples are every day.
While I used Joor the least, Joor is important during Los Angeles Market Week where customers physically come into the showroom to look at the latest samples for future seasons. Joor is a wholesale digital data exchange and marketplace that provides brands and retailers tools for order processing, assortment planning, and analytics. We used Joor to speed up checking out processes when customers are looking through our clothing racks and picking which products to buy during market week.
Before my internship, I did not realize how important it is for companies to use the right technology platforms to make their operational processes more efficient. I am thankful for my hands-on experience with these technologies because I may be using them in my future jobs, which will give me a competitive advantage among other applicants.