Helping apparel and textile buyers make sense of a highly-fragmented global market is the promise of an online sourcing platform that also claims to speed-up cycle time and take cost out of the process.
The tool is called Foursource, and is headquartered in Berlin – where its management team around CEO Godecke Wessel and CSO Jonas Wand bring together know-how from a number of fashion and e-commerce companies such as Falke, Bogner, Westwing, Rocket Internet and Amazon.
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Buyers with a combined retail volume of more than US$30bn with brands such as S. Oliver, Katag, Escada, Oui, Zalando, zLabels, Schöffel, HBC Europe Kaufhof, Odlo, Ahlers and Marc Cain are already said to be using it – along with manufacturers in more than 30 countries.
The platform enables buyers to compare manufacturers based on detailed profiles, machinery lists, certifications, company updates, a digital marketplace and showroom feeds. It also exposes them to opportunities like ad-hoc capacity offers.
A search and matching engine connects buyers directly with potential partners worldwide based on requirements and capabilities. For example, filter options allow to search by product categories, sourcing countries, lead time, order sizes, materials or special treatments.
Similarly, for manufacturers, Foursource provides an opportunity to increase sales and balance capacity bookings.
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By GlobalDataBy ‘following’ existing and potential customers, manufacturers can gain better insight to target their sales and marketing efforts, as well as understand buyers’ product needs, price and quality positioning, order profiles, markets or certification requirements. This also means they can avoid travel and sampling efforts for potential customers that have insufficient fit.
At the same time, manufacturers can permanently demonstrate their capabilities in an online showroom to see which products catch most interest and to post free capacity or materials availabilities to a selected audience. A search with extensive filter options and a powerful matching algorithm also helps manufacturers to find new customers – without agents or intermediates.
Another claimed benefit is that by using one platform with all relevant information, the whole organisation – be it design, product management, purchasing or executives – has detailed insight into the company’s supplier network. Employees save time and can focus on their priorities by sourcing more efficiently with a targeted approach.
Another goal is to drive transparency and standardisation into the fragmented global sourcing market, as well as make apparel sourcing less costly, safer and to provide solutions that enable all players to substantially speed-up their cycle time, be on-trend, and to leverage their value proposition to their customers.
Last month just-style also profiled another new sourcing platform that aims to streamline the apparel buying process:
New sourcing platform pairs brands and manufacturers
