Apparel businesses face a complex market. With increased demand from consumers, these companies must produce mass quantities in little time. These items create thousands of data points across thousands of products.
Apparel software solutions exist to help these businesses manage and make sense of this vast amount of data. Industry-specific systems are often the better choice over generic solutions. Here are the top six reasons why your business needs apparel software.
1. Place Wholesale Orders Into the System Easier
For companies that are wholesalers or distributors, or take orders from these companies, wholesale orders can be complicated. With single orders that can request quantities in the thousands, companies must be able to efficiently manage the order and its pricing.
Many e-commerce solutions offer features that cater to wholesale ordering. Wholesale companies can order through an account that is set up with special pricing. Depending on the system, they may also be able to keep track of their order.
2. Keep a Live and Accurate Inventory Count
Companies often have stock in many warehouses across the country or even the globe. This makes it difficult for apparel businesses to keep track of their inventory. Inventory management is crucial, as these numbers help in forecasting. Too much stock can be costly to store while too little stock won’t meet demand.
Warehouse management systems work with the apparel industry’s needs. WMS software will track your products from the moment they arrive in the warehouse to the time they ship out. These counts are live so you can trust their accuracy.
3. View Inventory of Specific Styles
Your inventory includes many styles of clothing. Each of these styles comes in many options for sizing and an array of colors. That’s a lot of data that your software needs to track. General software solutions are often not equipped to sort this data. You may not be able to sort reports by color and size, making it difficult to get a grasp on your inventory.
Industry solutions can meet these needs so you can get the information you need. ERP systems synchronize your data across systems to provide you with inventory counts and custom reports.
4. Reduce Waste From Excess Inventory
High demand has led to the practice of producing items in bulk as quickly as possible. Stores must then sell this product so they will have room for the new items. If the company doesn’t sell these products as predicted, there is a large excess of unsold products. These leftover products are a loss to the company, sometimes at several billion dollars, as this product has to be sold to off-price retailers.
A PLM tool helps manage your apparel, from design to sale. It puts data from planning, sourcing, production and more into one place. Your business will be able to make informed decisions that will guide forecasting and inventory.
5. Manage Your Decoration and Uniform Orders
Keeping track of team uniforms is necessary for many businesses. Your company may have many garment options, like shirts and aprons, that come in many sizes and colors. Uniform management systems can catalog your options, help you manage your orders, show your order history and set limits to prevent you from going over budget.
There is also software for the apparel industry that will manage your decoration orders. You can enter and review your orders as well as input unique specifications for custom orders.
6. Set Up Product Associations to Increase Sales
It is common in online shopping for a website to recommend items to add to your cart. These recommendations are the result of accrued data on customers. The goal is to increase sales by encouraging the customer to spend more time shopping and add related items to the cart.
E-commerce solutions build product relationships by using data about style features, sales history and comparable products. These products are often displayed in an “items ordered together” section on product pages or in the cart before checkout.
Get Apparel Software That Will Scale With Your Business
Apparel businesses need software that will keep up with demand and make processes efficient. At FDM4, we have developed apparel solutions suited to the industry. Use our systems to keep track of your inventory, streamline your supply chain and cut down on wasted products. With over 40 years of experience, we have partnered with apparel companies across the globe to help their businesses grow.
We’re ready to partner with you. Contact us to get started!