The exponential growth of digital has created an environment that 20 years ago didn't exist, and even today retailers are still finding their way around it. As more consumers become connected to information than ever before, fashion businesses are compelled to understand and innovate their operations based on what their customers want, in real time.

attune’s private lunch event, ‘Fashion Forward: Adapting to the Modern Customer Journey’ was held at Hush Mayfair in London last week and it was a great turnout with amazing food, lively conversations and some of the latest insights in the fashion industry.

Written by Richard Emmott, Head of Retail, UK- attune

Another way to ask this question might be: “What do any of us want?” After all, unless you are emulating the High Sparrow (Game of Thrones, anyone?), we are all fashion and lifestyle customers. As customers in 2016, we are making many (maybe even most) purchases in a digital environment.

When was the last time you did some serious shopping IRL (in real life)? If the answer is not recently, you’re not alone. Currently 75% of men and 63% of women are more likely to browse a webroom than a showroom. This shift in consumption behaviour will continue as digital matures and connectedness makes shopping online ever more convenient. Forrester Research projects that the shift to online will impact more than half of all sales in the next five years.

As the adage goes: you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. In today’s landscape of exponentially increasing digital sophistication, it can perhaps be of some small comfort to business and process managers working in the vibrant and dynamic world of fashion to know that they can still rely on old adages. 

An example of this time-tested wisdom is aptly illustrated through the struggle that many established brands face in seeking to build functional yet novel omni-channel consumer experiences while still operating out of siloed systems, infrastructure, strategies and thinking that were part of the pre-omnichannel era.