Is it time for your brand to shift to digital selling?

What triggers a change in your brand? Is it the fear of missing out (FOMO) on a trend? The need to keep up with the competition? Or is it when you see potential to do better business by implementing new processes?

Change can stem from a number of motivations, but it benefits from a clear business objective. In digital selling, these objectives may include expanding markets, reducing samples, or strengthening the brand. However, there is one common denominator among all successful implementation stories: the people who have embraced the change.

Before beginning to plan your brand's move towards digitizing the fashion value chain, ask yourself and your team whether this solution can be integrated into your sales processes, and whether this is the right moment to do so. At Stitch, we work closely with brands to help them on their digital transformation journey. We asked our experts when they think is the best time for a brand to start this journey and how to do it.

What is Digital Selling

Digital selling is how we name the use of digital-first channels and digital content to drive wholesale sales. A brand can do digital selling through B2B ecommerce platforms, marketplaces, digital showrooms, and even immersive virtual experiences. It requires digital tools like the Stitch Showroom to host the sales presentations, draft the orders, and more. Also, you will need digital content like marketing materials and even renders to feed the digital selling environment.

With a digital selling strategy in hand, your team has a new, effective way to achieve its growth objectives and reach key retailers. The brand storytelling is strengthened by having marketing onboard to help with the images, videos, and the overall collection look and feel for the buyers. Merchandising can prioritize key styles, have the entire collection easily available on the digital showroom, and produce strategic samples to reinforce the brand assortment. With better collaboration between teams and the right mindset to optimize collection content, brands can accelerate and scale up their go-to-market.

Where should I start in Digital Selling?

Are you considering implementing digital selling in your brand? Here’s where you start.

1. Align the mindset

Share your ideas with your team and check if everyone is on the same page about the innovation mindset. Change is always challenging, but some people are more enthusiastic than others. Identify those who are engaged with you and start promoting the idea from within the team, peer to peer.

Art Zuijderwijk, a sales consultant and digital selling expert, highlights that salespeople may feel nervous when transitioning to digital selling: "For sales teams, the main focus is to create sell through, allowing them to sell more and outperform their competition. This is how they gain market share and reach their sales targets. Digital solutions are an opportunity for brand leadership to support transformation by providing the right tools for the brand and teams to thrive in this scenario.”

It's important to realize that digital selling isn't simply the digitalization of traditional offline sales practices, such as printed catalogs and physical samples scattered on a showroom floor. Rather, it involves rethinking processes and using a digital mindset to explore how things can be done with the digital tools available.

2. Define your goals and metrics

Think about what a successful use case for your brand would be when implementing digital selling. If brand alignment is the most important strategy at the moment, then your goal should be to improve brand assortment sales as a sign that your storytelling is strong.

If you are looking to reduce samples, it is important to discuss with the sales teams their content needs and what is necessary to tell the collection story. This will help you identify indispensable samples and those that can be replaced with digital twins.

At Tommy Hilfiger, for example, one of the goals of implementing the Stitch Showroom was to increase the sales team's efficiency. They achieved this by having better preparation time while using the digital selling tool, resulting in sales appointments being twice as fast without compromising sales results or the relationship with retailers.

3. Start Small

"People often assume that they need to have everything figured out before they can start, when in fact, they can start small. Begin with one product group and slowly introduce new ideas while aligning and improving the existing processes” says Christine Lindeloo, digital transformation expert at Stitch.

Even if your goal is to digitize 100% of the sales experience, you can still start small. Chose a capsule collection, one market, one team. This could be adapted to different situations, but it is the best way to achieve successful implementation rates.

Once you have one use case, analyze the results and learn from them. Consider what worked, what can be improved, and over what timeframe. Use this knowledge to scale up your efforts.

If you're confident that now is the time for your brand to shift to digital selling, our team of transformation experts is ready to help you define the next steps. Learn more at Stitch.fashion.