Transform Fashion Merchandising: Achieve Seamless Collaboration with Visulon’s Line Planning Platform
In the rapidly evolving world of fashion merchandising, the process of creating an appealing and trend-driven line and assortment plan requires precision, creativity, and meticulous collaboration among teams who deliver on the brand's vision.
Every new season presents fashion teams with the challenge of developing a line and assortment plan that embodies the brand’s identity and aligns with the latest market trends. From the initial conceptual sketches to presentations and approval, the process is complex and requires continuous collaboration between teams and experts.
Departments such as design, merchandising , and marketing synchronize their efforts to ensure the final line plan is ready for production – a task that is anything but simple.
James, a senior merchandising manager working for a leading casual urban clothing for men and women brand in North America, faced the challenge of coordinating and collaborating when tasked with creating a trend presentation and line plan for Summer 2025.
The executive team wanted a detailed presentation from James focused on the current seasonal trends for 2024 and derived valuable insights from recently concluded summer collections and fashion week events.
It was a crunch time, and James had to deliver a report that would impress the executives and streamline the subsequent production process.
As he started coordinating between his team and other departments, he realized that the challenges ahead were multi-layered and complex.
Caught in the frustration: James’ coordination nightmare
James needed sales data from the last two seasons and local trend reports for markets such as the US, UK or France. As he started reviewing the latest fashion week trends, he uncovered that the company had manufactured similar styles and designs in 2023 which could give a head start for the 2025 line and assortment plan.
To his dismay, teams were spread across multiple locations, each contributing crucial parts to the overall trend presentation, making coordination even more challenging.
Communication between the teams was not just fragmented, but ideas and information about the market trends were scattered throughout printed reports, email threads, chat groups, and Excel spreadsheets.
Gathering feedback and data from one team and relaying it to others became a Herculean task, exacerbated by the lack of centralized tools where one team can complete their tasks and others can pick up from where they left off.
It wasn’t a one-man job as multiple teams would need to provide critical information for the presentation to ensure that the most up-to-date trends information is captured and utilized for decision making. There was limited room for any real-time collaboration with use of current multiple tools, isolated design solutions, and scattered information, which led to lengthy delays and the excessive number of iterations.
James found himself becoming a bottleneck, constantly sending emails or nudging team members across different regions to keep the project moving.
James felt the mounting pressure of racing against time as the days slipped by.
Despite the tireless efforts of various teams, progress remained slow. The final presentation felt like a disjointed patchwork of ideas rather than a cohesive masterpiece that would present a crisp line plan supported by market trends and historical sales data.
From frustration to innovation: James discovers Visulon’s multi-user mode
James had to find a way to get the teams to collaborate seamlessly and avoid these pitfalls in the future.
While searching for solutions, James discovered Visulon - an AI-powered visual merchandising platform, and got his executive team to check the Visulon demo.
In addition to offering a comprehensive suite of tools for seamless line and assortment planning, Visulon featured a Multi-User Mode—a groundbreaking feature that enabled teams to work together from the get-go on a presentation in real-time, breaking down the barriers that had previously hindered their ability to create the perfect trend and line planning presentation.
Visulon’s Multi-User Mode delivered a wide range of benefits:
- Real-Time Collaboration: Visulon’s unified platform allowed teams to access, edit, and make changes to the presentation in real-time, eliminating the need for fragmented communication through emails or other platforms. From adding new designs to updating market trends and forecasts, every team member could now contribute seamlessly.
- Centralized Communication: Visulon’s platform included additional tools like notes, comments, and notifications, enabling merchandisers like James to tag team members, discuss new ideas and collaborate – all within a single organized platform. With a centralized approach, Visulon could ensure all communications were visible, accessible, actionable and effective for everyone.
- Fast Feedback: James could see, using Visulon, the consolidated feedback from other teams quickly. Thanks to the commenting features on the platform, Executives and other stakeholders could provide inputs on the presentation in real-time, ensuring all relevant information and details were incorporated without a miss.
- Seamless Interaction: With Visulon, James and his teams could ping each other with questions and updates. This not only could result in swift decisions but also ensure everyone would be in the loop. This dynamic interaction could further boost a sense of teamwork and speed of execution.
With these visible benefits of the Multi-User Mode and various additional unified line and assortment planning capabilities, the executives decided to go ahead with Visulon!
With Visulon, James no longer struggled to coordinate and collaborate with designers, marketers and other teams spread across the organization. Beyond alleviating manual tasks, Visulon provided a platform that fostered creativity and leveraged the innovation and expertise of diverse experts within the team and the entire organization.
Visulon’s AI-powered fashion merchandising platform: Streamline collaboration to reduce time to market
For merchandisers like James and teams working in hybrid & remote environments, Visulon offers incredible tools to streamline fashion merchandising, allowing everyone to work smarter together and more efficiently.
Visulon provides the tools needed to streamline workflows and encourage teamwork in an industry where collaboration is vital. Features from Visulon that enable simultaneous & multiple edits and centralized communication can ensure fashion teams can tackle even the most demanding line plans and executive presentations with ease and speed.
Features from Visulon that enable simultaneous & multiple edits and centralized communication can ensure fashion teams can tackle even the most demanding line plans and executive
Furthermore, the ability to collaborate and work simultaneously can drastically reduce the time spent on online planning and assortment creation, enabling big brands to cut their time to market by up to 50%.
Transform chaos into seamless teamwork with Visulon's innovative capabilities!
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