This year, at IFF 2024, IMAGES Group is excited to announce the inclusion of theme-based sessions. These sessions are designed to provide a focused and in-depth exploration of key topics that are shaping the fashion retail industry.
Each theme-based session will bring together experts, thought leaders and enthusiasts to delve into specific areas of interest. From sustainable practices and technological innovations to emerging trends and case studies, these sessions aim to offer valuable insights, foster discussions, and inspire new perspectives.
Whether you are a seasoned professional seeking the latest advancements or a newcomer eager to grasp the fundamentals, these theme-based sessions promise to deliver a rich and immersive conference experience, so prepare to engage, learn, and contribute to the collective knowledge that will shape the future of our field.
Some of the theme-based sessions to look forward to are:
Let’s Make Fashion Talent Great Again: Brands are at a point where they understand the value of digitizing their Go-to-Market processes, with benefits including a reduced reliance on physical samples, faster decisions, shorter time-to-market, more agility, and the possibility of unlocking new business models and consumer experiences. However, as they scale their efforts season after season, they are faced with a shortage of skilled talent for the world of tomorrow. How can companies rethink their approach to education and training for Design and Digital Creation roles to account for an ever-changing technology landscape, evolving industry expectations, and a new generation of learners?
Let’s Make Customer Experience Great Again: Companies with a customer experience mindset generate 4- 8% more revenue than their competitors on average. As a result, the customer-first strategy has become a competitive advantage, key differentiator, loyalty booster, and a driver for repeat purchases. So then, with the sweeping change in the consumer behaviour landscape, what should the future of customer experience look like?
Let’s Make Retail Experience Great Again: As a category, fashion has lower barriers to entry as compared to other consumption verticals. Numerous new, small players — typically digital-first — are redefining customer engagement and shopping experiences through social media and data-driven personalisation. On the other side, brick-and-mortar stores are seeing a resurgence of their power as ‘theatres’ for customised in-store experiences that not only surprise and wow, but also educate the consumer through storytelling and human interactions. Retail Experience of the future will be a melange of the pluses of all channels. How do businesses match the new parameters of Retail Experience?
Let’s Make Fashion Marketing Great Again: Personalisation. The silver bullet. And easier said than done. In a world inundated with content streaming in from every direction and at all times, personalisation may be a potent differentiator, but for fashion marketers, the consumer universe is becoming increasingly hard to track, let alone capture. But also, never before have we had such an arsenal of tools and solutions to market intuitively and hyper-effectively. There’s no limit to how technology and talent can intersect to put the wow back in fashion marketing.
Let’s Make Fashion Supply Chains Great Again: Competition in the fashion industry is shifting from ‘price and quality’ towards a deeper focus on ‘timing’. The fashion supply chain of the future will not be one-size-fits-all. Companies may need to have multiple layers of sourcing and supply chain systems to fit different product sets — such as for the ‘Classics’ (where efficiency is important, but speed is not) versus the ‘Trendies’ (fast-moving; where speed and efficiency are both critical). But again, with technology, we have unprecedented tools on hand to do this.
To explore in-depth insights into the theme-based sessions at IFF 2023, click here.
