South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum 2014: From manufacturing to branding
Friday, 19 December 2014 12:00
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The Sri Lanka Design Festival (SLDF) kicked off for the sixth consecutive year in Colombo with the participation of industry experts, students of the Academy of Design (AOD) and design enthusiasts.
This year the festival introduced the interior designing segment, which saw anexhibition held from 4-7 December at the Sri Lanka Exhibitionand ConventionCentre (SLECC).While the SLDF featured interior design, fashion and contemporary craft related forums, fashion shows and exhibitions, the most looked forward event of the festival was the South Asian Apparel Leadership Forum (SAALF).This year’s forum focused on how manufacturers could make the leap from manufacturer to global brand.
“The purpose of today’s forum is to spend some time thinking about, talking about and having a conversation about what it takes to make that leap from being a manufacturer to being a brand. To understand what brands do, to understand where the market is going because it is just not good enough to understand where we are today, you have to understand where you will be tomorrow,” SAALF 2014 Event Chair/ GT Nexus Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Kurt Cavano noted in his opening remarks.
Welcoming the gathering, Joint Apparel Association Forum (JAAF) Chairman and Maliban Textile Ltd. Managing Director Azeem Ismail said: “Design and innovation play a giant role in our future. This move from manufacturing to branding is one that will cement our position as a fashion hub in South Asia. These important discussions will speed up our journey and give us the essential knowledge to go forward.”
The world-renowned trend forecasting and researching entityFuture Laboratory Co-founder Chris Sanderson and Editor in Chief Martin Raymond presented their analysis on brands, retail, consumer trends of the future and the kind of brands the world wants to look at within the next five years.
Following are excerpts of the presentation by Sanderson and Raymond:
The brands of the future
Some people refer to retailers as brands and some brands are retailers. What we are noticing is a great change and blurring of traditional retail, and the blurring of how you would define a traditional brand. Three things Conversation, Collaboration and Creativity they are the things we associate with people not the entities.
Brands are becoming more like people. It is easier to fall in love with a person than falling in love with a piece of wood. Brands are traditionally inanimate objects.Brands need to be reconsidered and reconstructed to match the 21st century audience. It is impossible to separate the notion of brand from the concept of retail, because the two go hand in hand. Without retail a brand is meaningless because the process of engagement through consumption is what makes a brand meaningful.
Think about a traditional shop, increasingly we are reaching our consumers online, in a store or on a smart phone or tablet device. That is the challenge that we now face; we are expected to reach out and communicate to begin a relationship with our consumer. The person we want to touch in all sorts of different platforms in all sorts of different ways.
If I look at an old hierarchy I would not find any of these words; hierarchical, didactical, transactional, hard, ungiving but look at the terms here: Collaboration – good tone of voice, experiential – don’t tell me show me, interactive, emerging – the idea that the brand surrounds you. If you think about retail, it is now increasingly about experience and last year 25% of sales in the luxury market were sales of experience not of a product. So even at that status which used to be of high value and high touch status, people are buying emotions and buying experience. So that is really a big shift on how brands received. Not about status but how it excites you in terms of engagement.
Global brands are now rethinking their positioning and how they reach their 21st century target audience. Take the alcohol industry for an example, all the leading alcohol brands did not have an end to end distribution chain. Owing for the fact that they talked about on and off markets within alcohol and their primary point of sale; bars, restaurants, hotels or as it terms in the UK off-licence places is where you go to buy liquor. None of which are controlled by the brand itself.
It is only in recent years that major alcohol brands have been looking at the luxury apparel brands that have the vertical control of the entire operation. In order to have brand power they need to be able to demonstrate globally. They have to be able to control every step of the consumer engagement process. Technology is playing an increasingly vibrant and important role in bringing this journey to life.The fun factor is brought in to the brand by creating an environment where there are intelligent glasses, there is touch sensitive technology, have the use of swipe technology with an iPad and screens which comes together to tell a story.
Technology in itself is pretty boring but when you allow a story teller, a magician, a creative, an artist to get the hands on technology; they can make wonderful things happen. They can make stories come to life; they can make engagements magical and wondrous.The consumer is expecting to engage with your brand not just that they could touch it and feel it, that they can hear it and they can play with it, it will respond back to them. That is the first rule of branding in the 21st century. Is that you use all five senses to animate the brand and activate the experience.
Brand and retail drivers
We are expecting brands to behave like people. How does technology help us as societies and businesses to transform the world around us? Technology does not transform society, society transforms itself using technology. The largest issue here is the mega-systems that are created and that are currently dominating. The amount of big data that we suddenly have is changing the way we do business. They have already changed the structure.
We have global mega-systems that are united, networked, federated often not hierarchical but heterarchical. This is why we had the collapsing of traditional B2B networks because, all of us as individuals have become buyers and sellers. An interaction with a brand is no longer transactional. We all have elements of value that is changing the way we browse, the way we socialise and the way that we shop.
Mega tailors such as Google promises to make the world a better place through technology and its CEO Larry Page is stepping back to look at the next 100 years on how the business would progress.15 years ago Apple controlled less than 5% of the global computer market. The big players at that time were Dell and IBM while they are still predominant in certain sectors; we all know that everyone wants a slice of the Apple pie and in the middle of this year Apple deemed to be more valuable than Coca-Cola.
Technology is useful and it allows you to extend the presence of your brand in to the consumer mind space. Previously I had to walk to a store, or had to have a laptop or desktop. Kids today not only use mobile phones to shop but to interrogate the world. So the technology we are seeing here is allowing the brand to live in the pocket. That great shift allows you to own a share of the consumer’s pocket.
In 2014 we passed an interesting landmark more of now globally get on to the internet through a mobile phone than through a traditional PC or laptop. It is all about the power of pocket. This changes the relationship we have with the consumer. No longer is retail necessarily have to be bricks and motor, it can be but it does not have to be.
Technology allows convenience and the shop assistant being able to offer a tailor made experience and how technology has been used in retail. It allows brands to leapfrog over the traditional obstacles stood between them having a direct relationship with the end-use of the customer.
By 2016 one billion people worldwide will make transactions of over $ 1 trillion by mobile. Phones are becoming wallets is hugely important. Social networks such as Facebook, LinkedInand Twitter were setup as social mechanisms but at present people are using these as mechanisms of trade and mechanisms of collaboration. We say never advertise on Twitter and Facebook. What people prefer is to find about brands through conversation, find links that would create more conversation about a product/ service.
Brands have discovered on social media, which if they talk about them the customer is not interested. But increasingly the story of the brand, the adventure of the brand, the brand working with charity, the brand doing good in the local community; these are the story that develop the brand beyond transactions and puts it on the space of collaboration.
Not only are the consumers collaborative, creative and conversational; but they can also be critical at times. It is about a relationship, a partnership, it is about engagement and it is about a fact that there is communication on both sides.
Experiential branding is not just about communication but about the engagement and it is the emersion. It is interesting how businesses are collaborating to build strong partnerships and challenge the ways of traditional selling or advertising. Currently in fashion and technology if you think about the way Apple is pairing with brands like Burberry is a very good example.
What we are seeing in fashion particularly which is called wearable technology is fitting fashion and technology together.A research result on what was the most influential fashion and lifestyle brand globally people had rated Apple higher than Chanel and LVMH. Technology is increasingly will be a way for manufacturers and designers to add value to the brand. Imagine the notion of being able to monitor your lifestyle, your diet, your general brain activity and your stress levels; where is it easier to wear? Is it easier to wear as a big thing on your hip or a bracelet? This changeover helps businesses understand technology and fashion well linked together.
Combining media and retail
Increasingly media companies are adding elements of retail and making media shoppable. While retail companies are investing on becoming media providers. This goes to the heart of how we use social platforms not as mechanisms for direct selling but for creating conversation, for creating noise and engagement about a brand. This relationship between media, media platforms and retail are proving to be hugely important. Finding way to be able to wrap-up a brand and using communication platforms are hugely important.
Multiplatform/Omni channel sounds a bit heavy. But if you think about it shopping is supposed to be fun and something that everyone enjoys doing. Therefore total retail is something which sounds more engaging. The more the consumers expect retail environments to be total; digitally rich, to be personal, to be curated and often to be phy-gital. The idea behind it is when a brand becomes both physical and digital.
Research that Sacs has done has shown that the consumer who engages with a brand both physically and digitally has a four times greater spent of the brand than somebody who just engages with a brand either in store or through a single channel. A multi channel approach their spend gets deeper and increases. Against the backdrop of these macro shifts we are beginning to see a wave of whole new kind of retail ideas.
Do-tailing which is also called worker theatre: activity where buying and shopping is not a passive thing. It is how the customer wants to feel activated and engaged with the brand, through their hobbies and through their lifestyle. Fashion and lifestyle brands are transforming their stores in to learning hubs and communities as much as spaces to shop.
Factory owners should open their spaces to show people not only their craftsperson that they are allowed to see. They need to take the consumer to see behind the scenes and allow them to see the story from their point of view. Amplifying the generosity by opening its doors and revealing is hugely important.In the 21st century modern technology can be as engaging for a consumer than their traditional understanding of how something might be made.
The interest can actually be in seeing modern technology at work, to see precession engineering actually demonstrating itself is also a part of the journey. Think about enhanced senses and how to create deeper relationships. It is not just about communicating a message; it is not just you pushing information out. It is about how do we create a push-pull mechanism, how do we engage with our target audience. Think about extending the possibility of the brand using virtual and extend the shopping experience using mobile technology.
Retail theatre
As a consequence bricks and motor (BaM) having to compete with online, compete with the customer’s attention; stores are realising the potential of retail theatre; the notion we describe the retail moment. How many of you came out laughing? How many of you came out crying? How many of you came out moved by a range of clothing you saw at the store? But when you go to a theatre, when you go for live events, when you listen to your children sing a song that is how you feel. What retailers are trying to do in these immersive flag stores is to build the magic, intimacy and personalisation you get when you go to the theatre.
This shift in mentality redefined Burberry from being an apparel company to a 21st century luxury media organisation. How do we become an experienced brand? How do we actually touch our consumers in all sorts of different ways? The advantage we have is that technology is getting quicker and it is getting cheaper. It is putting you directly in touch increasingly with your consumer, which is hugely important.
Smart Beacon is a technological breakthrough which is embedded to Apple phones that is just not been used yet. It changes the world of retail forever. Very few retailers recognise their consumers on a facial basis we simply do not know who our customers are anymore. That inability to recognise a customer presents a real problem. How do I sell to somebody when I know nothing about them?
However, technology is changing the way that we could relate to a customer in an interesting way.Technology allows you to have a different dialogue with the customer. But it also reminds you that the customer is king once more. You do not need customer service people to connect with your customer but with technology you can directly connect with you customer. That is where brands are now moving to.
Future brand platforms
Social networks play a major role in this. As we move down age we see the increased importance of that social networks play within the consumption process. Social networks are now global and works across all age demographics and indeed the fastest growing network on Facebook is women over the age of 45.Facebook is not a young person’s platform at all. Social networks should not be used as direct selling network, but primarily as communication platforms. Although in some instances the social network itself is becoming shoppable, as we seeing through Google class work working with shoppable hangouts to create these environments, where there is social selling.
Predictive retail:Where retailers make decisions in advance of you, thinking about them; for example Target has a sophisticated predictive system algorithm which looks at patterns of purchase depending on what the consumer added to their shopping cart/wish list. The use of big data enables to create tailored, highly personalised marketing and even predictive purchases. Predictive retail will become a way of short coding and delivering services to the customer that they may not be even thinking about. What is important is that just how much money manufacturers will save in the future; in terms of being able to make and deliver the right product to the right market at the right time. That is where big data is going to transform direct to consumer retailing work in the future.
Village brands:The other aspect is brands becoming Village brands which make brands to behave less like brands and to adopt causes and think locally and become meaningful to groups of people. The sense of thinking local and becoming a village brand is a very important aspect to future brand platforms.
Piggy backing on mega systems: Increasingly brands are more about some of their products, who do you partner with? Who do you associate with to make this thing better? It does not have to be done by you. If you do not have great internet capacity why not team up with Google plus? They have got Google retail which is there simply to help you to outperform against Amazon;using the system to piggy back to get to the bigger audience.Google is actively looking for partners to work with to test and trail their new technology. Therefore, companies should appoint a Google Ambassador to work and talk to Google.
Content convergence: retail brands are rethinking the way they talk to their consumers and investing on their editorial content. What are you doing to create a media platform for conversation? How do consumers find out who you are, what you are doing and how they could begin a conversation with the brand?
Curate brands: Brands need to curate their products and not to create more problems. When a consumer goes to a store if they see between eight and 10 items on a rail, they would pay 30% more for the item than that they see 28 items on the rail. There is profitability in limitation and there is increase of value in curation.
Social brands: Brands are launching networks of their own. Building communities around shopping and inviting consumers to curate and share feedback about the brands. So creating platforms that makes brand function as media platforms and shopping networks introducing new branded social network communities.
