Most clothing resellers have had to alter their projections in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Covid has negatively affected revenues, staff availability and strategy for most businesses. Many have begun moving their businesses from brick-and-mortar to online. Work from home restrictions are in place for most locales. Even worse so, many across the globe will reenter lockdown due to the recent uptick in Covid cases. Thus there is no better time than now to rethink the way you’re managing your listing process. Although you may not be operating with a full team, Tailored is keeping resellers listing quicker than ever with its patented resale clothing app, called Capture.
Why You Need A Resale Clothing App
From barcodes to photographs, the listing process for resellers involves many steps. In fact, the average time to list a single garment from intake to online is 10 minutes. Because of this, many resellers opt to list only their best product online, saving the remainder for their physical store. Unfortunately the listing process requires a lot of manual input from human hands, herein lies the timing issue.
Depending on your location, number of years in business and market penetration, you probably take in between 500 and 5,000 items per week. Without an efficient intake process you’ll miss out on getting the majority of your product online. And with resale growing at the rate it is, and Covid requiring social distancing for at least the next year, you won’t want to make a habit of skimping out on listings.
Shaving multiple minutes off your current listing process is definitely possible, but only by combining steps and incorporating automation technology. Now is the time to investigate your options. If listing automation is something you’re interested in, the Capture garment measuring app will help.
No More Measuring By Hand
The most effective way to shave time off the listing process is to eliminate the garment measuring step. Not remove it completely of course (see our post on why measuring is a must for resellers), but remove the need for humans to perform the task.
Measurements are necessary, but they’re a major bottleneck. Additionally, when it comes to measuring garments by hand, no two humans perform the task the same way. Spend a day in a garment factory and you’ll quickly realize this. One might tug too much on the garment or may measure from a slightly different location than the other. Both situations can cause measurements to be off 1/4 inch or more. Even the tools they use give out. For example, Chico’s once told us they swap out their measure tapes every 90 days because they stretch from overuse.
Measuring inaccuracies are certainly a reason to automate the measuring process. If the purpose of measuring a garment is to inform customers, the process should be accurate and consistent. The inordinate amount of time teams spend on measuring is also a reason. Though measuring is not the only step related to measuring which requires time, entering the measurement data into the listing form is the other half.
With the click of a button Capture will enable your teams to reduce time spent on measuring and data entry from an average of 2 minutes down to 20 seconds or less. Allowing for a 50% or greater overall increase in process efficiency. This efficiency gain is accomplished most effectively during the photo stage. Think of Capture as the last garment photo you’ll take. With one photo you get a complete set of measurements from each garment.
An Image Is Worth 1,000 Words
This photo is unique for two reasons. The first being Capture is the only technology on the market that can measure an entire garment using a single photograph. The second reason is after taking the photo of your garment, this is the output image you get. As you see, the photo is marked with lines that show exactly where the garment was measured. This not only helps your teams quickly assess the accuracy of the measurements and measure location, but it is also helpful to your customers.
With Capture, consumers know exactly where the garment was measured and can easily make a dimensional comparison with something they own. It’s well know the apparel industry has returns and consumer confidence issues with online clothes buying. These problems are amplified with second hand apparel as items tend to have shifted beyond their original size specs.
Help your online shoppers make a quicker, more accurate choice by providing them with helpful data.
Instant Data Transfer
If you’ve looked into adding a resale clothing app to your mix, you’ve probably found most don’t do much more than streamline your listing form. How much time do your teams spend entering data into your online listing form? This is one of the bottlenecks resellers face.
Tailored believes the main objective of an app for resale businesses should be to eliminate and/or combine steps throughout the listing process. The Capture platform was built using Tailored’s core measure technology at the center, with additional features provided as add ons.
For example, if you need Capture to scan a product barcode along with photo-measuring, this is a customizable add on. As each reseller’s process is a bit different, Capture provides a la carte options instead of “one size fits all.”
Capture’s base package is an integration with Shopify, as many resellers use the eCommerce giant for their online platform. But Tailored also has packages for more advanced technical teams who are looking for an integration into their own custom websites or listing apps. The Capture API and web SDK are available to be customized as each client needs.
Resale App Considerations
Make sure to take the following into consideration as well if you’re in the market for an app to complement your resale business.
- Will it allow you to list to other websites besides yours (eg: one button listing to your site plus eBay, OfferUp, etc…)?
- Does it have the ability to pre-fill your fields (eg: pricing, product description, etc…) to eliminate time spent per listing?
- Will it integrate seamlessly with the eCommerce platform you’re using?
- Will it allow you to turn features on and off as you need them (eg: barcoding, shipping labels, meta tags, etc…)?