By Cristina Holm, co-founder HOLM
Retail personalisation technology is supposed to be the magic bullet for the problem of online fashion returns. But does asking shoppers to guess their own body shape provide accurate data or a good customer experience? […]
By Richard Burrell for HOLM
Retail news? Barely a week goes by without another chain parading its woes: announcing profit warnings, negotiations with creditors and store closures. BBC News today reported that 22,000 retail jobs are at risk in 2018 alone. The finger of blame is frequently pointed at the growth of e-commerce and Amazon in particular, but is it really that simple? After all, Amazon has been around since the mid 1990’s so it is hardly a new challenger.
By Robin Phillips for HOLM
A previous HOLM blog post discussed the importance of empowering retail sales staff with technology to put them on an equal footing with today’s ‘mobile first’ consumer. Yet there remains a reluctance among retailers to roll out in-store technology. They have their e-commerce platform for that sort of stuff after all. Then there is the risk of getting it wrong – an expensive mistake for any ambitious retail director.
But the problem is that customers simply do not silo your retail business into ‘stores’ and ‘e-commerce’; they view you as a single brand and expect a seamless transition between their online and in-store activities. In-store technology is the only way to provide this true omnichannel experience. Here we share five ways to make your in-store tech a success: […]
By Cristina Holm, co-founder HOLM
Which fashion retail head office positions didn’t exist 30 years ago? Head of Multichannel; social media manager; customer experience analyst… to name but a few. Yet on the shop floor we still have ‘shop assistants’ and that’s pretty much it.
In this post I’m going talk about how the role of the shop floor workforce has evolved dramatically in the past three decades. Next I will share four simple changes fashion retailers can make to ensure today’s sales staff feel relevant, valued and productive. […]
By Emma Vickers for HOLM
Closures and portfolio consolidation are sure bets in the game of fashion retail results bingo, right up there with unseasonable weather. While the e-commerce boom has admittedly left the sector with too much space on its hands, bricks and mortar has been unfairly dismissed as a dying channel. This has resulted in customers feeling short changed when their local store gets the axe or, worse, watching it slowly decay due to under investment.
Here are five reasons it’s more important than ever to invest in stores and make sure the baby doesn’t disappear with the bathwater. […]
By Steve Johnson, co-founder HOLM
Technology has transformed the way in which we shop for clothes: purchases are made at the touch of a button. Yes, as we whizz towards a 5G world, the buying process has never been easier. It’s what happens next that has failed to keep up. Here we examine how ‘the returns problem’ is set to be the decade’s defining issue for online fashion retailing, and more importantly what can be done to solve it.
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Great customer service
Helpful, informed staff
Everything kept simple
Accurate advice
Convenience
Efficiency (saving time)
Well protected personal data
Nice surprises
How does your fashion brand and your competitors score versus this shopper checklist?
Being ‘sold to’
Speaking with ill informed staff
Returning anything
Getting bad advice
Visiting stores to see a website
Having their time wasted
Finding personal data misused
Being disappointed
Service that’s bad can kill a fashion brand, especially in-store. How does your business perform versus our checklist?
Sizing is the main reason for online fashion returns… or is it? Next time you try on a garment that’s a little tight… try another in the same size.
You may be surprised when you find a difference. Sometimes a big difference! This is because the processes within clothing manufacture (like pattern cutting and sewing) remains particularly manual. It means you rarely find garments identically sized (let alone symmetrical!)
What’s more, in HOLM’s ongoing research, we see variances of 10-15% in the same garments (i.e. same label size, same colour and design). For example, we found a 6cms difference around the chest on a major high street retailer’s medium size polo shirt. That’s a difference of ‘snug’ or ‘loose’ depending which one you selected!
This highlights that ‘SIZING’ recommendation is flawed. Made worse, when you realise that even when you do find a correct size fit, it doesn’t mean it looks good on you.
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Loyalty matters. More now than ever in fashion. It’s what holds a business together. HOLM gets it. HOLM is all about the shopper. Similar to Amazon, we’re obsessed with the customer. We focus on winning more than their trust. We give each confidence. Transforming how they feel. Creating a very special brand of loyalty.
Our software has been developed specifically for fashion, creating a totally personalised service. It may be tech, however it simply comes across as a magical shopping experience to each customer. It’s inexpensive to deploy and turns untrained store staff into highly productive stylists. All managed through a single application.
Brilliant for fashion retailing, as we dramatically improve customer service skills and your shopper’s in-store experience directly translating to higher turnover and eye watering returns on your investment introducing HOLM. . We focus on the customer… so you, the retailer, can focus on great product. We even help there too. Our unique customer data sets create powerful management information for brands to improve their ranges and collections.
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