5 Key Issues and Challenges Fashion and Apparel Businesses Owners Face

What Do We Mean By Customer Pain Points?

Customer pain points are the challenges that customers are experiencing in the market. Essentially, they are
the problems and issues experienced by the customer throughout their journey.

To put it in very simple words, a customer pain point is a perceived or real challenge for which a brand or
an organisation can offer a solution. It begins with the discovery and ends with a transaction. Generally, there are four kinds of
pain points. They are process, support, financial and productivity.

Now let’s move towards understanding some of the customer pain points.

5 Major Fashion Pain Points And Their Solution

Without further ado, let’s move towards knowing about some of the major pain points in the fashion industry.

1. Supply Chain Bottlenecks

The fashion industry’s supply chain suffers from a lot of unexpected disruptions like material scarcity,
logistical delays, increasing costs, and staff shortages.

Half of the fashion industry is suffering from a similar issue. Only an increase in consumer spending will
intensify the balance between both demand and supply.

To minimise the disruption, the companies must redevelop their sourcing strategies and bring more flexibility
into their supply chains.

Solution:

The brands should work with the suppliers to scale up the nearshoring, minimise the shipping costs, continue
offering instant delivery, moving the manufacturing operations closer to its consumers to avoid supply chain
bottlenecks.

2. Copying and Counterfeiting Of The Products

Well, product copying is the most common and biggest challenge faced by fashion brands. This world is running
on dupes. It is so hard to sell real products when everyone wears knockoffs. Meanwhile, small businesses are
at high risk because they might not have the required resources to stop it before it enters the market.

And once a fake product has gone into circulation, it can be quite difficult for people to say whether it’s
real or fake. Illicit counterfeiters threaten the whole economy, and often the customers are consuming fake
and unsafe products.

Solution:

Fighting the counterfeiters is a very difficult battle but that doesn’t imply that you can’t do it. The first
is to prevent people from copying the products. This is tough but you can take some steps to make it harder
for the counterfeiters to copy the products of the brand through design features that are difficult or
unique to copy. (Such as holograms or watermarks)

Also, you can trademark the designs or words, which makes it easier to take legal action against those who
copy you. You can protect your fashion brand by working with trusted manufacturers who won’t share your
design with others.

In addition to this, you can stop people from purchasing copied products by motivating them to buy real items
from you. The best thing is to make use of technology to find out if someone else is using your content or
image without your permission. Most importantly, make sure to register your trademarks, designs and patents.

3. Sustainability

Everyone is now inclining towards sustainability. However, it is very sad news that the fashion industry is
the most polluting industry on this planet. The biggest challenge faced by the fashion industry is
maintaining sustainability.

The garment businesses make use of natural resources immensely. Also, they release a lot of toxic wastes
directly into the rivers, lakes and oceans. In short, the industry is exploiting natural resources.

However, on the consumption side, the fashion business model has taught customers to look at clothes as FMCG.
This led to textiles being in the landfill after a few wears.

These fast fashion organisations are making huge profits, by making full unjustified use of the environment.
But, this should not go on, we can’t do this to our environment. If we continue to do this, then we will
have to face a lot of challenges.

Solution:

You can remove this pain point by recycling, reusing and deconstructing second-hand materials. Most
sustainable brands make use of recycled and natural fabrics that need minimal to zero chemical treatment,
less energy, little water and no pesticides or fertilisers to grow.

4. Adaptation of Automation

Automation is becoming very popular these days. Many industries have already adapted automation while some
are still trying to figure it out. Advanced technology is assisting us with the adoption of automation in
different industries. Moreover, lots of innovation has already been done by the fashion industry to increase
their productivity. The manpower requirement is very less when using automation.

The humans get replaced by advanced technology, which means the machines are gradually replacing the humans.
Though the whole garment and textile industry can’t be fully automated some sections of it can be. So many
see adapting to automation as a challenge because of a lack of knowledge.

Solution:

To automate the processes in your fashion business, you need to deal with this challenge. For that, you can
invest in developing and enhancing industrial and mechanical engineers to bring out the best. They will do
so, by designing and customising the machinery for various sections of your industry.

5. Creating Promotions And Offers

The apparel and fashion industry runs on offers and promotions, unlike the other industries. The promotions
include buying 2 get 1 free, buy 1 get 1 free and many more discounts. The reason behind this is the
trendiness and seasonality of the fashion industry. Fashion products become outdated, so they must be sold
at the time when they are trending. With the help of attractive offers and promotions, the products get sold
easily.

But, the problem comes when it comes to managing these promotions and offers. It is quite a challenging task
to promote different products on different marketplaces. Firstly, you will need to find out what type of
promotion will work best for your products, what will be their selling prices and everything else.

Solution:

In this world that runs on technology, you can make use of automation to create offers and promotions. You
can promote the products with the help of automation.

Also, the products need to be paired together to increase sales. This is a very tough task that requires a
lot of care, as one mistake can lead to a lot. After that, you will need to update the new price and
promotions across different platforms. It can be a very chaotic and challenging task to track sales and
update the listing price.

Conclusion

Here comes the end of this article. So, whether you are a primary care provider such as Jeff Bezos offering
almost all the products. Or if you are a specialist such as Phil Knight who caters primarily to a particular
niche, your job as a digital store owner is to relieve the challenges of your focus market. In doing so,
you’ll become a trustworthy brand and your chance for success will skyrocket.

All you need to do is understand how to rise from the struggles of a fashion brand with proper management and
the right strategies. This is how you can remove all the pain points, retain customers and benefit from
repeat purchases. Also, you can contact us for any assistance.