Hello and welcome to September: In Review

August | July | June

We’ve nearly come to the end of September, which saw Fashion Week spring up across cities and beautiful fall colors appear across the northern hemisphere. This means it’s time for another round-up of the latest retail, wholesale and ecommerce news. So, grab a coffee and take 10 minutes to catch up on the following.

1. Video: Brightpearl WMS Launch & Natural Baby Shower Customer Story

This month, we officially announced the launch of our Warehouse Management System (WMS), which aims to help businesses adapt to a shifting consumer-led retail environment.

Our WMS increases control over your inventory, warehousing and an increasingly expensive returns process by enabling you to centrally manage your warehouse and returns across all channels from a single interface, which in turn, greatly reduces your admin time.

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of visiting our customer, Natural Baby Shower, to find out how Brightpearl and our WMS is helping their business.

Natural Baby Shower is an online retailer of natural baby products and they had some great insights for us on the day, which you can see and hear first-hand in this Youtube video:

We particularly loved hearing how they’ve been able to halve the time spent on their inventory counts!

And for those of you who prefer reading, we’ve also updated their customer story on our website with everything they told us on the day. You can read it here.

2. Article: It’s time to blow up your business model and switch to DTC

In a recent article for the Supply Chain Times, our CEO, Derek O’Carroll, discusses how retail is in the middle of a significant reinvention and evolution.

He says: “Brands simply no longer need to rely solely on their distributors to stay in business, and many aren’t, causing a tectonic change in the retail and services industry - the Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) movement. While it began a few years back, the likes of Dollar Shave Club, Under Armour, and Glossier have exploded into the market and these brands, plus many more, have been paving the way in recent years.”

In Derek’s article, he talks about how DTC brands successfully remain in control of their customer data, customer relationships, profit margins and the overall customer experience - from discovery to delivery. He also discusses the appeal of DTC and how technology can help. In our humble opinion, it’s well worth a quick read!

3. Guide: Are you ready for the returns tsunami?

We’ve been busy over the summer months creating a brand new best practice guide.

It aims to assess whether your business is capable of managing an increase in returns due to mispicks, damaged goods, inevitable peak season returns or services like Try Before You Buy.

Once you’ve finished the self-assessment, the guide will then suggest next actions for you to take and best practice advice to help you get your returns process under control.

To recap, the guide will enable you to:

• Better understand the reasons behind why returns are increasing
• Assess your business's capability to manage returns
• Implement best practices for your returns process

You can download the guide here.

If you do decide to download the guide, we’d love to hear what you think about it, so please feel free to come back here and leave us a quick comment below!

We’re also hosting an event in London next month, which is all about the returns battlefield that retailers are finding themselves on. You can register your interest to attend on the event page itself.

4. News: Fashion Week Top Trends Revealed

When September hits, so does Fashion Week across the world in cities like London, New York, Milan and Paris. And we can always confidently rely on Drapers magazine to showcase all the latest fashion trends you need to know about for the year ahead.

Here are a few of the insights they’ve shared so far…

New York Fashion Week (6 - 14 September 2018)

So far, Drapers have focused on the womenswear trends from New York Fashion Week. Some of the trends they spotted include:

• Beach and surf vibes
• Yellow color blocks
• Knitted crochet
• Asymmetric hemlines
• Animal print

Discover more of the top trends from New York Fashion Week here.

Milan Fashion Week (19 - 25 September 2018)

For Milan Fashion Week, Drapers have concentrated on the trends and themes from the menswear lines, such as:

• Luminescent neons
• Check prints
• Sports athleisure
• Tropical prints

Read more about the top menswear trends from Milan Fashion Week.

London Fashion Week (20 - 23 September 2018)

According to Drapers, womenswear trends from London Fashion Week included:

• Neutral tones
• Tailoring
• All-black evening wear
• Animal print
• Neon color palettes

Find more 2019 trends from London Fashion Week here.

Paris Fashion Week (25 September - 3 October 2018)

While Paris Fashion Week has shown the following trends across their menswear lines:

• Pops of yellow
• 1980s flashbacks
• White color blocks
• Denim
• Statement power suits and tailoring

Read more about the top menswear trends from Paris Fashion Week.

And that’s all we have for September. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog to get the next round-up delivered straight to your inbox!