The 9th annual business forum Fashion Retail 2016, the largest professional event in the fashion industry, was held on December 8 and 9 in Moscow at the Palmira Hotel.
45 speakers presented their reports at the forum, including Florian Jansen (Lamoda), Mikhail Urzhumtsev (Melon Fashion Group), Andrey Pavlov (Zenden), Anna Pilyugina (LPP SA in Russia), Konstantin Nadezhdin (Familia), Ksenia Ryasova (Finn Flare), Sergey Sarkisov (Novard), Evgeny Ustinov (Tsvetnoy), Dmitry Buzylev (1001 dress), Vladimir Yanushkevich (Plan B) and many others.
Top managers of Baon, LPP SA in Russia, Familia, Tsvetnoy, Trend Island, Canoe, Porta 9, Lamoda, Melon Fashion Group, SMCP, Little Gentrys and Lambada Market took part in the forum for the first time.
By tradition, the event brought together on one platform fashion ‒ market leaders: founders and managers of clothing, footwear and accessories retail chains; top executives of manufacturing companies, distributors, designers and fashion industry professionals.
Manufacturers, suppliers and representatives of the chains met to discuss the development prospects of the legal market for fashionable clothes and shoes, the difficulties of moving from multi-channel to omnichannel, the experience of market leaders in working with their own retail, customer focus and customer approach, innovative technologies in fashion retail, market changes consumption and new principles for the formation of proposals in the clothing and footwear market.
At the plenary session, participants tried to answer the main question of the business forum - “how to earn more.” 57% of those who voted answered that they would develop new sales channels and technologies, 24% - to invest in attracting customers, 19% - to optimize the internal structure and costs.
Answering the question “Do you plan to grow your business in 2017 year”, 42% of congress delegates said that they hope for growth in 20-30%, 36% of participants said that they expect growth of no more than 10%, 19% of respondents confidently look at the future predicts growth of 50% or more, and only 3% said they hope to at least maintain the level of 2016 sales for the year.
According to Mikhail Urzhumtsev, CEO of Melon Fashion Group, over the past 15 years, all serious international brands have entered the Russian market and now the assortment of Russian stores is equivalent to the assortment of European ones, and only the buyer determines the success of a particular brand. The task of business and government is to create common and transparent rules for all and to control their implementation. He added that the Melon Fashion Group is actively investing in the regions, as regional markets show high profit margins due to the same pricing policy, but low spending. He noted that while there is a personnel and technological shortage in the light industry, manufacturers will choose markets with a well-functioning infrastructure for the production of their products.
With the development of online trading, not only global, but also small brands have become available anywhere in Russia thanks to platforms such as Lamoda, said Florian Jansen, managing director of the company. Such brands are not able to physically be present on the Russian market and are actively using online resources, and this trend will continue in the coming 10 years. Lamoda is actively developing in the regions and is currently working in 160 cities, and, according to Jansen, the growth of the company will occur precisely at the expense of the regions, since it’s important for customers to choose, and online stores can now offer a larger assortment than regular stores.
According to Andrei Pavlov, president of Zenden, the Russian clothing and footwear market is overheated and people do not lack in choosing products. He noted the importance of active state participation and dialogue between business and government to solve industry problems.
“The Fashion Retail Forum is rightfully the only business platform in Russia for top officials and fashion business professionals. More than 200 major retailers and manufacturers of the fashion industry come to the event annually. The objective of this year's forum was not only to gather the most successful top managers, but also to talk with them as honestly and openly as possible about the problems and difficulties they face in the process of business growth. Despite the fact that the target audience of the event is managers and business owners, whose main mission is to form the company's development strategy, the agenda included issues of intangible staff motivation, transition to an omnichannel sales model, correct assortment planning, restructuring of forecasting systems, creation and production of goods. Those managers who came to the forum understand that today the decision-maker must be integrated into all internal processes of companies, even if many functions are transferred to other management levels. Next year the forum will be held on December 7-8 and we will have something to surprise! ”- Anna Shmakova, producer of the Fashion Retail 2016 forum.
The participants called the session of commercial negotiations one of the key events of the forum. Representatives of Wildberries, KUPIVIP.RU, Lamoda market, Butik.ru, Alibaba Group, Metro Cash & Carry, Jeans Symphony collected dozens of offers from manufacturers.
The forum was organized by BBCG.
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