California Apparel News

After ending its inaugural, exclusively digital trade event, which was hosted Sept. 1–Nov.1, Informa Markets Fashion and its e-commerce platform partner NuOrder revealed important insight derived from its metrics. Affording options to buyers and brands for a wholesale digital-event experience due to on-site trade-show cancellations stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Informa and NuOrder launched MAGIC Digital, Coterie Digital, Project Digital, MICAM Americas Digital and Children’s Club Digital.

The new virtual-event format offered a variety of product categories encompassing a range of price points, with apparel, accessories and footwear from 1,100 brands featuring 760,000 items in women’s, men’s and children’s. With more than 20,000 registered, qualified buyers from more than 97 countries, 20 percent of total registration represented new buyers and retailers. The event facilitated 55,000 connections between brands and buyers.

“By embracing a new way to connect and do business through our digital platform, the industry is now able to more quickly and easily come together on a global scale,” Commercial President of Informa Markets Fashion Kelly Helfman said. “With this rebound in globalized commerce, brands and buyers can capitalize on newer business opportunities with even greater scale through a larger variety of vendors and products. Knowing the industry will continue to shift, and, with direct connections being an industry cornerstone, we’ll continue offering enhanced opportunities and continually assisting in generating more-meaningful engagements.”

During the event, buyer behavior signaled a new era in wholesale priorities. At 22.5 percent, drop-ship was the most-searched brand attribute by retailers across all marketplaces. The second most-searched brand attribute across all marketplaces, with 17 percent, was sustainability. Through reexamining how they conduct business from the beginning, buyers are attempting to reduce risk by adhering to on-demand models and aligning with mindful production practices.

“While the demand for digital tools and more-robust technology was accelerated by COVID-19, the industry’s digital adoption also allows us to uncover extremely useful industry trends and behaviors,” said Heath Wells, co-founder and co-CEO of NuOrder. “Through these data, we’re able to see retailers’ and brands’ immediate response to changing market needs, which helps inform the fashion industry. Continuing forward, and as we synthesize more data with the return of Informa Markets Fashion’s digital events in the upcoming fashion buying cycles, these data models will continually be enriched, offering the fashion industry actionable market insights.”

Generating 290,000 page views, the eight-week marketplace featured 153 editorials and 52 education sessions that featured more than 562 brands, driving 14,000 engagements. Through its analytics, Informa found that the top-three most-searched apparel items in order of interest were blouses, dresses and activewear across all marketplaces. Jewelry was the most-searched accessory item. These findings support forecasts that predict the continued demand for Zoomwear, or the COVID-19-era trend of work-from-home employees dressing in office-appropriate attire above the waist.