Curse or Blessing? What are the benefits of short-term

CURSE OR BLESSING?

Short-term programmes, seasonless concepts, pronto and flash collections - do they really generate more sales for retailers? And do they really keep customers interested with a never-ending stream of new products? Or does the all-year order merely waste resources and increase the problem of too much merchandise on the sales floors? Does it primarily serve suppliers eager to increase order volumes artificially? This is clearly a controversial topic. Text: Isabel Faiss. Illustrations: Claudia Meitert@Caroline Seidler

TOTALLY IRRELEVANT Michael Munz, Store Manager/The Listener

“We collaborate with suppliers who plan the delivery windows and renewal on the sales floor by utilising artificial scarcity, manage ment, and guidance. Thus, flash programmes are totally irrelevant to us. We map out the entire year with more than 100 employees and generally have no need for anything that can be produced and delivered at short notice. On the contrary, we rely on collections and products that are so limited worldwide that they can only be bought from us. The market doesn’t need more merchandise. I don’t perceive this as an additional service for retailers, especially not for multi-brand stores. It may help stores that are undecided in terms of collection planning. It only serves the suppliers, who can utilise their delivery capacity and generate additional revenue by subsequently increasing the planned budgets of their customers. As a result, sup pliers determine speed, resources, inventories, and product range development. Retailers who know their customers well don’t need short-term flexibility. We order products with high inventory turno vers. They are sold out immediately and cannot be re-delivered. The market must be able to offer products that are not always available everywhere.”

LONG ESTABLISHED PRACTICE Torsten Stiewe, Head of Buying Fashion/The KaDeWe Group

“Generally speaking, it is very important for us to fall back on shortterm programmes. We decide on whether a flash programme suits our product range - and whether there is a need for it at all - on a case-by-case basis. This is usually a topic for the middle to cheaper price segments. Naturally, we talk to our partners about goodwill in terms of taking back or exchanging goods. The short-term pro grammes require flexibility from all involved parties, because we are taking a risk too. We started working with pre-collections that have very early delivery dates many years ago. As a major customer, we have the opportunity to buy them even earlier. That’s a strong argument for us. By utilising our experience with individual brands, we already allocate certain portions of the total budget in our annual plan. If I can integrate a flash programme and thereby compensate for something that hasn’t moved well, then I can create new excite ment on the sales floor and offset a loss of sales in other product ranges. However, such programmes can also be integrated into pop-up concepts. The ability to react quickly is extremely impor tant - not only because of e-commerce, but also because we are, in some segments, measured analogously to the vertical rhythms that we cannot and don’t want to replicate.”

UNATTRACTIVE - SIMPLY EASY MONEY Nick Chiu, Co-Owner/Apartment Store Brisbane

“This topic can really go both ways. It depends on the brand. You just have to be smart about the ones to bite on. Sometimes they re ally help if it’s a brand that performs much better than you projected. Obviously, it can go the other way and get you into a little trouble if you stretch the budget too much. Especially if the short-term collections sell at the cost of the main collection. No matter whether a brand offers two or four seasons per year, we usually just stick to the two main collections. It’s a balancing act between moving prod ucts that we really believe in and people get a lot of joy from and moving products for the sake of volume. It’s a tough one. We don’t need endless rotation and a rapid cycle of the new to keep people coming back. We like to think that the brands and products we sell have a level of quality and timelessness to ensure that they won’t be out of fashion in a mere six months.”

IT’S IN DEMAND Benjamin Schinnenburg, Buying Director/Fashion ID GmbH & Co. KG, Peek & Cloppenburg KG, and Retail Buying GmbH & Co. KG

“Generally speaking, flash programmes are a blessing in the sense that they afford us a great opportunity to react to trends at very short notice, especially for our online shop peek-cloppenburg.de. The order round of these collections becomes all the more impor tant as our trend-conscious customers are made aware of trends much earlier through social media. They expect these trends to be available at stationary retailers and online immediately. In the process, we have also noticed that trend developments in terms of colours, shapes, and patterns assert themselves much quicker and have to be implemented swifter by our suppliers. All in all, our excel lent purchasing structure allows us to handle short-term very well - provided the proportion of flash programmes remains manageable compared to regular orders. It is also helpful for limit arrangement when suppliers offer predictability in terms of number and volume of the flash collections within the order round.”

A CHALLENGE FOR BOTH SIDES Kristin Versümer, Managing Director/Impressionen

“I have been the managing director of Impressionen since April and I have no intention whatsoever of getting rid of our catalogue. I con sider it to be the heart of the business. The customer wants content. She wants to be entertained and enjoy an experience - be it digital or haptic. The aim is to dynamically create and communicate short er-term topics in relevant digital channels alongside the catalogue, which has a fairly long lead time in the conception phase and production. Our approach is to trigger desirability via the limited availability of a product rather than suggesting infinite availability. This makes the shopping experience, the quality, and the entertainment value of our offer more important than the topicality of the product. Market saturation is more present than ever. We simply cannot keep up with the actuality of vertical players. Accordingly, we have found our niche by offering special quality products that are made unique by their typical Impressionen character. Topical campaigns and col laborations could be an option for our online business in the future. Limited editions, special editions, and short-term collaborations are a challenge for both sides.”

EVEN MORE DROPS! Nikolai Goutzov, Owner/Superconscious Store

“We are an independent store. In order to remain competitive, we need to react quickly, stay fresh, and be up-to-date. In this respect, short-term programmes are a blessing, as they allow us to offer new merchandise every two or three weeks. That’s what our customers expect. We have taught them to visit us often and discover new things. Close contact with customers and brands is extremely im portant to us in order to react swiftly. When we work with seasonal collections, we face the problem that trends may have changed several times between order and delivery. We have been working with brands that offer many smaller collections for quite some time. If something is sold out and we need to re-order, the products are delivered within a week. Generally speaking, we only order small quantities. We don’t order 150 of the same sweatshirt. That means more work, but also more freedom. Another advantage is that you don’t need to worry about financial advances in the form of deposit payments for months. Instead, you can plan your budgets flexibly.”

NO SOLUTION Claudia Flessa, Owner/Modeagentur Flessa

“I’ve seen several promising Pronto concepts in my time and I am no fan. Issues such as quality problems and surplus stock soon dampened the initial euphoria and I lost interest in the idea. We rely on brands that have a certain quality level and standards. Such products cannot be manufactured at short notice. There’s enough speed in the market for those seeking it. The whole thing really an noys me, even the whole online hype. We still need fashion. We still need emotional experiences and collections with multiple delivery programmes per year. What has become increasingly common is that customers re-order via the warehouse. That is a short-term flexibility I consider essential. Therefore, our customers don’t neces sarily require shots from the hip. And those who have tried to utilise such a programme to obtain a range cheaper and faster were, more often than not, disappointed. Many delisted the flash programmes again. Pronto is certainly an option for some segments, but not for our regular customers who desire topicality with certain standards.”

LESS PRE-ORDER - MORE FLEXIBILITY Peter Eberle, Managing Partner/Konen

“Curse or blessing? The answer is relatively simple. If the collections are good, they are an absolute blessing. It’s, however, a veritable curse that one never knows that in advance. Our buying strategy focuses specifical ly on brands that are capable of offering an exciting programme all year round. The trouble is that the brands of today are already proud of themselves when they reduce their production time from twelve to six months. That’s still far too long! At least for everything that doesn’t come from the dark-blue modular kit. Vertical players are overtaking us on all sides, even though we should succeed in keeping up with such concepts in terms of topicality. Today, there is no trend that lasts three seasons. You can only keep up if you’re fast enough. I would like to see more brands playing in this league, thus providing us with a wider choice of short-term programmes. System suppliers, who have what feels like 200 delivery dates, still need to create and develop their collections months in advance. The latest fashion developments are not reflected, which means we lack innovation on the sales floor. More often than not, the industry has started offering to take goods back. That too is a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, it ensures that one can artificially inflate buying volumes, because it doesn’t actu ally burden your budget. On the other hand, it ensures that the market is flooded with goods. The opposite would be better. Some are brave enough to address this. Basically, you need to cut back and order less during the classic pre-order phase. That increases your budget for short-term topics, thus allowing you to control the goods on the sales floor more directly and flexibly.”