After fashion events, three layers of the ecosystem face different but connected challenges.

BRAND LEVEL

Demand signals are scattered across emails, spreadsheets, stylist notes, and human judgment. After the fashion week, brands gather pre-order figures primarily through retailers and stylists. The retailers/ stylists gather these orders through fragmented channels including emails, calls, direct meet-ups with their clientele . These associate-driven workflows pose risk and inconsistency to the brand. As a result, demand insights reach brands late, often after key product decisions are already made. Overproduction and waste become structural risks rather than exceptions.

Brands don’t have the data to tie an order to a customer in this process. They only receive the numbers in multiple batches through different channels. So these are blind inventory bets made by the brand with partial information. Additionally, there is no payment history associated with a customer leading to issues at exception handling. There is no clear accountability when items go missing or returns fail. On top of it, manual tracking of approvals and deposits in the absence of a shared system of record across stylists, showrooms, and brands contribute financial and managerial overhead.

Because of the absence of a pre-order infrastructure, there are limited insights available to the brands on how clients engage with collections that are premiered on runways. There is no data to understand how each piece or looks resonated with their customers. In a way, runway demand is inferred, not measured. The brands has to rely mostly on presumptions and overall trend signals given by the stylists - which could potentially be miscaulculated.

Clear demand signals help the brand to make strategic business decisions on pricing and sale. However, today there’s no shared system across stylists, showrooms, and brands to capture demand and interactions. And blind inventory sits outside of the core ERP systems. This gap makes it hard for brands to act on those insights.