How Shaping New Tomorrow is targeting growth with Bleckmann

Danish fashion brand Shaping New Tomorrow is changing the way consumers think about traditional menswear with its approach to timeless and classic style. To help it drive forward its vision for the future Shaping New Tomorrow has partnered with logistics specialist Bleckmann.

Shaping New Tomorrow was founded by three friends in 2015 to challenge conventional manufacturing practices in the textile industry without compromising its vision to offer comfortable and stylish menswear. Its popularity with men has helped it become the fastest-growing Scandinavian menswear brand in decades and currently operates flagship stores in Denmark, Germany and Portugal, alongside a thriving website available in four native languages, which generates 60 percent of the brand's revenue.

“Shaping New Tomorrow was founded based on our own needs, and we’ve challenged the traditions and reassessed how classic, timeless menswear should feel and look," explain the founders. "During the past six years of development, we have found that it’s a constantly evolving process. We believe in retail. We believe in creating a unique customer experience – whether our customers visit us in- store or online."

This continued growth and planned goals to open more stores in Germany and to drive expansion in Scandinavia, Benelux, and the US presents challenges, and logistics is the key to success. 

We spoke to Simon Bargmann Rønbøg, senior supply chain manager at Shaping New Tomorrow to learn more about the importance of seamless logistics for a growing brand, how it has benefited from working with Bleckmann and how they are helping it achieve its future goals.

What did Shaping New Tomorrow look for in a logistics supplier? 

First of all, the most important thing is the service that our logistics partner delivers to our customers. Essentially this means that the most important factor is being able to deliver on their promises to us. Our logistics partner needed to have the capacity and agility to cope with fluctuating demands and peak periods.

What was it about Bleckmann that attracted you to them? 

Bleckmann had a laser-sharp focus on being the best at logistics. We saw multiple logistics vendors emphasising technology and sustainability over the actual service and logistics output. Robots and automatic storage systems were many vendors' selling points, while with Bleckmann, they were very selective in terms of choosing technology and making a full-scale implementation, it had to improve the service that consumers experienced.

It was clear to us that Bleckmann was great at logistics and had the right priorities. Furthermore, the vibe we got from Bleckmann was flexibility and ability to understand a start-up mindset of being resilient to change. This was crucial when working with a still immature organisation like Shaping New Tomorrow. 

Then on top of that being visionaries with solar panels on the roof and experimenting with technology to create value for the end consumer of course also helped the decision since these parameters also ties into our values.

What's the key to your successful partnership with Bleckmann? 

Honesty, great partnership, and a common belief in the vision. Like many other brands we faced the challenges of the global supply chain crises. Being primarily an e-commerce brand, we experience major peak periods in November and December. Due to significant production delays, we were only just able to get sufficient inventory before Black Friday. In this situation, Bleckmann showed a great understanding of the situation and made sure to orchestrate the operation to get every product into stock before Black Friday. Bleckmann managed to transport and receive over 100k units in one week.  

How important is seamless logistics to the success of Shaping New Tomorrow?

It is very important. Logistics is one of the processes that people outside of logistics rarely appreciate. However, when errors occur logistics will be the first to know and consumers can be very honest when that happens.

In other words, the logistics service does have a very high impact on customer experience. With the goal, to always exceed customer expectations, we must offer excellent service. 

As one of the fastest-growing Scandinavian menswear brands - you've been expanding your retail footprint - can you share your omnichannel approach and the importance of brick and mortar for your business? 

In our brick and mortar stores, we can offer a special experience to our "guests" as we call them. We want our guests to feel welcome on another level whilst being able to tell our story and introduce the brand properly. We see that our brick-and-mortar expansion helps with brand awareness online while contributing to a reduction in online returns. In our stores we are often constrained by space, so for our guests to have the same assortment as online we are looking to implement order from a store, click and collect, etc. within the next couple of months.

What are your future growth goals for the company - and how will Bleckmann help you achieve these? 

The overall goal is to create the future of classic clothing to provide extraordinary services, products, and experiences for our consumers. We aspire to become the leading tech brand to provide comfort and style to all. Looking a few months ahead we will scale our direct-to-consumer omnichannel model in all of Germany. Looking just a few years ahead Scandinavia, Benelux, and USA are in the pipeline.

Bleckmann is the operational backbone, it bridges the gap to foreign markets whilst keeping up with capacity requirements and satisfying loyal customers. 

On working with Shaping New Tomorrow, Bleckmann sales manager Jo Plehiers added: “We, at Bleckmann, are so proud and happy that we started this partnership with Shaping New Tomorrow last year. It has been amazing to see how they are driven and focussed on their plan, a fantastic young, enthusiastic team.

“It is our goal and duty to support the hyper growth that they are facing. We are convinced they choose the right partner.”

For more information, visit: www.bleckmann.com