Vans implements digital-first process with IWD's visual merchandising solutions.

The impacts of Covid-19 taught us all how to become agile and adapt (quickly) to change – a new normal – and largely speaking this was embraced by all, and particularly by corporate employees who were given the flexibility to work from home at any time.

This agility and digital fronted way of working not only reaped benefits for employees, but there was an opportunity to adapt similar operations and processes to the business overall – particularly evident in retail businesses as these changes saw faster time to market and improved cross-functional alignment.

IWD’s leading technology and software has enabled brands such as Vans to streamline processes and ensure brand consistency across their 500+ stores in North America. Partnering with IWD and utilising their visual merchandising solutions, the team at Vans were able to implement a whole new digital process and streamline their monthly merchandising operations – a process which is typically done through spreadsheets with no real visualization for store employees. By using the 3D display solution, the brand was able to build out full merchandising plans for monthly and seasonal planning, reducing overall time spent documenting store concepts by 25%. It also allowed senior management to ensure store environments and brand expectations were consistent across all doors, and with store staff adhering guidelines it meant key stores were no longer needed to be visited in person.

Not only does IWD’s solutions increase efficiencies in store, but it gives employees more time to focus on other key areas of the business beyond what is happening on the front line.

The technology allows brands to plan and create guidelines to streamline the merchandising processes, execute in-store directives to simplify in-store communication and compliance, and analyse store performance to optimise strategies and plan future campaigns.

This planning tool has been seen to reduce costs of up to 40% by removing staff labour and material costs like printing and shipping. Removing the old, inefficient processes saves 25% of daily time and maintains brand consistency across all retail stores, as well as improving productivity by 35% with cross-functional team collaboration leading to complete control over the customer experience.

Asset Factory has recently joined forces to partner with IWD with the aim of combining their key strengths to help clients thrive across their ecommerce businesses and retail stores and providing the best online and in-store experience solutions to cover their full merchandising cycle. For more information on this exciting partnership, read the full announcement here.

The team at Vans were able to implement a completely new, digital process in a 2-month period, so if your business needs to scale efficiencies or is looking for visual merchandising solutions, chat to our team about how Asset Factory and IWD could help or book a demo at our Melbourne studio today.