The global fashion eCommerce industry was predicted to fall from $531.25 billion in 2019 to $485.62 billion in 2020, owing to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the eCommerce fashion industry accounted for 29.5% of fashion retail sales in 2020, in the US alone! The value of the US market is projected to reach $100 billion by 2021, and the overall market is set to recover and hit $672.71 billion by 2023!
What are we trying to say?
The fashion industry in the eCommerce space is slated to grow faster than ever. With more and more brands - big and small, going online, it’s also becoming a competitive environment to survive in.
The winner?
The one that puts their best foot forward and offers the most seamless shopping experience. Of course, the quality of your products ‘obviously’ count.
This is where Shopify Plus for fashion brands comes in.
What is Shopify Plus?
If you’ve read up about Shopify or have a store on the eCommerce platform, you know it helps businesses like yours set up a digital storefront. It allows you to customize your storefront to match your branding, promotion strategies and to drive more sales by giving online shoppers a seamless interactive experience on the site.
Let’s just say Shopify Plus lets you take this very branding and customer experience to the next level as it is designed for enterprise level developments.
Shopify Plus is an advanced eCommerce platform that is designed to evolve and grow with brands from all perspectives.
Now if you’re wondering if Shopify does it all already, why should your fashion brand consider using Shopify Plus, let us explain.
Benefits of Shopify Plus for fashion brands
1. Internationalization
Let’s assume your fashion brand has a global audience. With Shopify Plus, you can add 9 additional stores that are clones of your original store, but designed and tailored to deliver a more localised experience with custom domains (.com, .com.au, .co.uk, etc), local languages, currencies and more.
2. Wholesale/ B2B features
If your fashion brand collaborates with local retailers frequently to sell your collection, this is a handy feature that comes with Shopify Plus. It gives your buyers access to a separate B2B storefront that is password-protected, where they can view custom pricing for bulk purchases, shipping policies, wholesale-only products and also get an invoice for the same.
3. Unlimited staff accounts
When you’re growing your fashion brand online, you’re obviously hiring as well to manage different aspects of your store functionalities. Be it for managing the new sale promotions on the web pages, approving customer reviews, updating product pages or simply managing orders. With Shopify Plus, you can add more team members to the admin dashboard.
4. Lower transactional fees
If you choose Shopify Plus for your fashion brand, you will be charged 0.15% only per transaction. So as a business, you’re generating more profits and have more cash flow with you as compared to Shopify and Advanced Shopify, wherein you’re charged 0.5% per transaction.
5. Custom checkout
As a fashion brand, you need to play on the habit of impulse buying of most shoppers. This is where customizing your checkout process comes in. With Shopify Plus, you can add a free product to cart via a discount code, create extra, custom fields like a gift message box, etc, utilise social logins via multipass and even enable address autocomplete.
6. Security and trust
Custom SSL certificates are exclusive to Shopify Plus. So if you’re looking at winning over an online shopper, this can help you get their trust and get them to buy from you when there’s a sea full of fashion and clothing brands selling at much lower costs on social media or online.
7. Exclusive and faster API calls
APIs are basically connectors of the storefront and the backend to manage completing functions like applying discounts, gift cards, signing in, etc on the site. With Shopify Plus, you are guaranteed faster API call rates with exclusive access to those that enable discounts, gift cards, adjustments, multipass/ single sign-on and users.
8. Added promotional tools
As a fashion brand, you need to move fast in the market to tap into seasonal trends or those influenced by the likes of celebrities or international icons. With Shopify Plus, you get exclusive access to Launchpad that lets you easily plan and automate all the activities required to execute a marketing/ sales plan. This could be a flash sale, a product launch or a sales campaign. You can also schedule bulk changes to your store setting up a start and end date based on an ongoing campaign.
Additionally, Launchpad also lets you manage and monitor these campaigns, and create invitation-only or limited-release product collections on your fashion brand. This is especially important for those fashion brands that feature collections in collaboration with influencers and other designers for a limited period of time or stock.
9. Advanced discount engine
When it comes to fashion and apparel, we as buyers are always seeking the best deal out there. We want to get the best in the best price and brands need to continually compete in this arena to entice online shoppers. The Script Editor in Shopify Plus lets you run multiple discounts based on product tags, delivery location and other parameters.
10. Custom automations
As a fashion brand, you may need to automate a number of processes on your store and marketing front. With Shopify Plus, you get to leverage Flow to build, import or even configure different automations for your business operations.
For instance, setting up rule-based discounts to serve different customer segments or sending out discounts at defined intervals. With this, you can make your backend more productive so that you get more time to follow social trends that can boost your fashion brand’s reach.
11. Service and support
This one is for all those business owners who have ever struggled to get help at the right time when running their online store. On Shopify Plus, you receive exclusive and priority support, a Launch Manager to assist you during the build and migration phase and a Merchant Success Manager to provide ongoing support post your brand launch.
And there’s plenty good that these add-ons do for your fashion brand! Let us show you a few that are doing stupendously well on Shopify Plus.
Fashion brands on Shopify Plus that are nailing online business growth!
1. Dressbarn
- Launching its online store in eight weeks
- Doubling of revenue and SKU count every month since launch
- A sales pace to reach $100 million in its first year exclusively online
2. Good American
- $1 million in sales on its first day in business
- Nine workflow automations built to streamline inventory management and product tagging
3. NYDJ
- Reduced its total cost of ownership by 65%, while simultaneously growing the business
- Enabled teams to test and learn more efficiently with new apps and plugins, all while generating incremental revenue
- Freed up employees' time so they can concentrate on building the business rather than fixing a platform
4. Aje
- Increase conversion rate by 135% in just a few weeks
- Reduce bounce rate
- Increase pages per session and average session duration
5. P&Co
- 112% YOY growth from 2017–2018 (the year immediately following the fire)
- European sales up more than 300% the year after upgrading
- Transactions doubled since moving to Shopify Plus
- Revenue up 40% YOY from 2018
But that’s not all. There are a number of other fashion, clothing and apparel brands on Shopify Plus that have leveraged its powerful features to grow their business by manifolds. You can check them all out here.
Should your fashion brand choose Shopify Plus?
While Shopify Plus comes packed with powerful features and abilities that can help you grow your business internationally, the answer to this question varies brand to brand.
For instance, if you’re a local fashion brand that specifically caters to the audience around you with no demand for the collections in other parts of the world, internationalization is not for you and would only add to your recurring costs.
Similarly, if you have a very small customer base, you’re probably going to need only a set number of automations to run your storefront.
So the answer lies in getting honest about:
- Do you want to scale your fashion brand internationally?
- Who is your ideal target audience?
- Who is your ideal customer?
- What are the aspirations of your customer?
- What are their expectations from your fashion brand?
- What does your three-, six- and one year- growth plan look like?
Yes, it can be overwhelming to make a decision. But if you want help evaluating ‘why Shopify Plus’ for your fashion brand, you can reach out to us for a consultation.
