Visualsoft – harnessing the power of community to help retailers navigate the digital shift

The speed of the shift to digital among UK fashion consumers is breakneck and retailers of all sizes will need to respond with equal alacrity. While the reopening of stores across the UK during the second half of June has – obviously – resulted in a swing back to physical stores, there is still a long way to go before stores regain their pre-COVID levels of popularity. Indeed, it may never happen at all.

Each month TheIndustry.fashion surveys 2,000 fashion shoppers on their current purchasing behaviour and future purchasing intentions for “The Index” study. During July shoppers told us that in the prior three months, 44% of them had bought their clothing online only during the prior three months. This was a marked drop from the 63% who had bought all their clothes online only in the three months prior to June (much of that period had been covered by lockdown with only limited fashion in-store shopping available in supermarkets).

On the face of it that looks like good news for physical stores – and it is. However, when you look at behaviour in January, when COVID was a mystery virus seemingly confined to a specific region of China, just 18% of consumers bought all of their clothing online in the prior three months. Well over half (56%) had shopped across both stores and online with the remainder (26%) only visiting stores.

With 2.5 times more consumers still shopping online only for fashion than at the start of the year, the priority for retailers becomes clear. It’s time to invest in your digital channels. Hoping that shoppers will come back to physical retail in the same numbers they did before is an onerous strategy.

Richard Hyman, a pre-eminent retail analyst who has been watching and commenting on retail for 35 years explains: “I think we’ve hit a brick wall [on shoppers returning to retail]. From the beginning of July people who were going to go back, who were ready to go non-essential shopping, did. People who didn’t want to go non-essential shopping continue to resist it – and will continue to resist it until there is some major reassurance, such as a vaccine.”

With all this in mind the launch of Visualsoft’s new Partners Programme looks like a masterstroke of timing (though in reality it has been in the planning for the past year). The e-commerce platform and digital marketing agency is making it easier for brands and retailers in fashion to super-charge their digital offer and is doing so by bringing all the partners needed to ensure success into one place.

For retailers this means a one-stop shop where they can find all of the technical, solution and community partners they need on one hub, and for the partners themselves, it offers them the ability to earn uncapped earning potential via Visualsoft’s referral scheme. The idea is to create a community of suppliers all pulling together to help grow each other’s businesses and those of the retailers they serve.

Visualsoft, which has offices in Teesside, Newcastle, Manchester and Dubai (its first international outpost), already works with industry heavyweights such as Klarna, Google and Amazon Pay, and, through its vsCommerce platform, has powered the e-commerce businesses of hundreds of retailers including Little Mistress, Moda in Pelle, Wonderbra, Gant and Charles Clinkard.

As part of the Partners Programme Visualsoft has created an online hub of all e-commerce solutions providers called PartnerConnect, which retailers can browse and use to connect with experts across payments, SEO, videography, branding, printing and more – even those suppliers that could be considered to be in competition with Visualsoft itself. And that’s OK because this project isn’t just about promoting Visualsoft, but about helping retailers capitalise on the digital shift. It’s also based on the spirit of partnership, which in the COVID era has moved higher up the business agenda, but which has been central to Visualsoft’s activities for the past 20 years.

Ed Harries, Visualsoft Brand Partnerships Director explains: “We’ve been working with retailers for over 20 years now, and for much of that Visualsoft has championed the relationships we have with our partners for the benefit of our clients.

“Our vision here was to create a rich and vibrant community of partners, with a shared goal of growing retailers online. We’ve built our programme to support every partner, whether they’re building websites or growing their retail clients businesses using marketing solutions, and to top it off, we’ve built-in increased earning potential to really show we mean business.

“Changing times call for innovation, and it’s crucial that we change tack to think of new ways of engaging customers. All our partners are now listed on PartnerConnect, our directory that allows retailers to find any partner quickly and simply in one place.”

Like all the best retailers, Visualsoft continues to innovate even during a global crisis. Those retailers who hope to make it through will need to embrace digital; even before COVID, that much was clear, now it’s imperative. Of course, that isn’t to say that physical retail will not recover to some extent but when it does in order to thrive it will need to be part of an omnichannel offer, even for the smallest of retailers.

It’s difficult to make firm predictions of how things will pan out exactly when the agenda is moving so quickly, says Hyman, but there is an exciting future for those who want it. “It’s human nature that the majority of people are really sucked into thinking that whatever is in front of them is the way things are. This is not the new normal, this is the interim normal.”

“Very few things in life are black and white and retail is no exception. Retail is so fragmented. However difficult fashion is at the moment, most of the issues were there already; they have just been accelerated and magnified by the pandemic.

“But those people who say that fashion is going to disappear – it’s preposterous. It’s 100% categorically not going to happen. Fashion will remain a source of vibrant dynamism.”

And Visualsoft too has pledged to be part of that vibrant dynamism. Says CEO Dean Benson: “We’re constantly innovating to put the retailer at the heart of everything we do at Visualsoft and this launch is another example of that. We’ve got big plans for our partner programme and I’m incredibly excited for what the future will bring for us.”

For more information on Visualsoft visit www.visualsoft.co.uk

For more information on the Visualsoft Partners Programme visit www.visualsoftpartners.com or contact [email protected]

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