While the luxury industry is benefiting from increasing global demand, it is also having to adapt to clients’ changing expectations: consumers have a growing taste for novelty, customization and a fluid, customer-oriented omnichannel experience, as well as increasing expectations that companies take responsibility for social and environmental issues in relation to their business.
Challenges
These market evolutions are driving the traditional luxury industry towards business transformations in order to stay competitive. There are particular challenges including a need to improve attractiveness through faster product launches and total customization. This requires reinventing product development processes including 3D conception and “lean” cycles. Luxury goods companies also need to transform effectively to omnichannel retailing, offering custom-fit services guaranteeing a perfect fluidity between channels. Another challenge is to optimize collection management (control of breadth and depth) through a location-based assortment approach, relying in particular on merchandise planning and data science tools. There is an urgent requirement to be more socially and environmentally responsible through transparency in production processes (especially in low-cost countries) and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (IOT traceability, low carbon transportation technologies, etc). There is also a need to counter demand volatility and consumer versatility and to avoid soon-to-be forbidden product destruction, driving them to develop predictive technology and supply chain agility.
How we can help
We collaborate with our luxury clients worldwide, along the entire value chain, to guide them in their transformations. We help with:
- Process re-engineering from product conception to warehouse deliveries, with a mindset of optimizing delays and increasing quality standards
- Collection, assortment and inventory planning and steering on both a macroscopic (categories and regions) and microscopic scale (in-store SKU) based on the best merchandise planning tools and practices
- Improving reliability of sales forecasts using data science
- Implementation of an agile supply chain (reliability of the production plan, DDMRP)
- Management of shortage and allocation (raw materials, new products, best-sellers)
- Lean procedures in logistics and production sites
- Redesigning logistics networks and optimization of transportation flows, taking advantage of the benefits of IOT technologies, real-time traceability and warehouse automation
- Definition and implementation of omnichannel transformation (service pallets, inventory centralization strategies, order management) and optimization of in-store back-office operations
- HR transformation and change management: mobilizing stakeholders and support in the business and organization transformation
