Sales Surge for Fashion Brands that Use AIMS360 Apparel Software for Omni-Channel E-commerce
E-commerce sales for 2020 are up a staggering 30%, while brick and mortar traffic has fallen by 52% compared to 2019, according to Adobe Analytics and Sensormatic Solutions. There is an obvious shift in consumer traffic moving to online channels and it’s imperative that manufacturers are positioned to take advantage of this shift. Companies who have embraced e-commerce and responded with a speedy roll-out of B2C websites are winning.
Fortunately, AIMS360 apparel software includes multi-channel & omni-channel sales capabilities in our apparel ERP software. This has allowed AIMS360 clients to maintain or exceed 2020 sales expectations by expanding to different e-commerce sales channels. AIMS360’s goal is to make the system flexible so that as business changes our customers can address the market quickly.
In 2008, AIMS360 apparel software began expanding its offering to integrate with additional sales channels, both business to business (b2b) and business to consumer (b2c). 2020 has been another year of software improvement in multiple areas, including sales & fulfillment. “Every year, AIMS360 adds features. These range from additional upgrades to existing sales channels and adding important new sales channels. We have 65+ integrations with sales channels like Shopify, JOOR, NuOrder, FashionGo, and Amazon FBA. In 2020, we added many automation features to help brands process orders faster with less human interaction.”, says Shahin Kohan, President of AIMS360. The latest upgrades include multiple automation upgrades for faster shipment processing. We improved the Shipstation and Third Party Logistics (3PL) integrations to allow for better automated order processing. “
Multi-channel & Omni-channel Sales
Many apparel brands use AIMS360’s fashion software for all their sales channels. In the fashion industry today, sticking to a singular sales strategy can be detrimental to growth. That singular strategy put several fashion brands at risk when COVID-19 hit and they were unable to pivot quickly and were lacking a strong apparel software partner like AIMS360. The future of the fashion industry is multi-channel and omni-channel sales. Below are some examples of sales channels.
- Wholesale boutiques: this channel allows brands to sell to boutiques who usually pay with net terms, a factor, or with credit card. Sometimes these orders will come through B2B platforms like JOOR, NuOrder, Brandboom, or FashionGo. These platforms are also investing heavily in the digital trade show model since in-person events have been unable to happen due to Covid-19.
- Wholesale department stores: this channel relies on selling bulk or dropship to department stores usually employing technology called EDI. See AIMS360’s bulk EDI retailer integration list.
- Dropship: This channel allows brands to sell through department stores e-commerce websites and other direct-to-consumer drop-ship retailers, popup stores, or flash sale stores. See AIMS360’s dropship EDI retailers integration list.
- Direct to Consumer (DTC) e-commerce: this channel uses your brands e-commerce website usually connected through the popular Shopify platform, Woo Commerce, BigCommerce, or Magento.
Operational Efficiency Using Apparel Software
AIMS360 apparel software provides inventory, sales, & fulfillment efficiencies. Many brands are growing sales successfully despite the turbulent fashion business environment because they are using AIMS360 apparel software to optimize stock levels and order fulfillment without excessive operational overhead AIMS360 apparel ERP allows for inventory management and order processing with any sales business model, including e-commerce.
As most apparel brands have both a direct to consumer and a wholesale business strategy, the tools and available integrations in AIMS360 apparel software allows for all orders to be housed in one unified place and allows efficient processing for all revenue channels.
Style Management – AIMS360 is the central style management portal for all SKUs. Many of the sales channel integrations allow AIMS360 to create the style, color, and size variants with images and descriptions. This significantly reduces the amount of repetitive data entry requirements when working with multiple channels. For example, if you are using JOOR for Wholesale and Shopify for B2C, your style data can be sent directly to those platforms direct from AIMS360 without having to repopulate the data manually.
Inventory Efficiency – AIMS360 is now the only integrated fashion ERP that brings Shopify orders and updates Shopify inventory in real time. This inventory efficiency lets you keep updated stock in Shopify to meet customer demand without selling out or overselling.
Fulfillment Efficiency – AIMS360 uses artificial intelligence to automate the order processing and fulfilment tasks. This means the warehouse just focuses on picking and shipping without having to take additional manual steps involved to process orders.
We do not know what the future holds, but we know that our industry is ever changing and partnering with AIMS360 ensures you will always be in the best position to tackle whatever lies ahead with our fashion business management software.
AIMS360 is the most popular ERP fashion software. The apparel software features cover the entire fashion business process including fashion production, material and finished goods purchasing, order taking, order processing, shipping, invoicing, accounts receivable, and more. Get a demo of AIMS360’s 100+ apparel software features & integrations.