Bengaluru, NFAPost: Fibre2Fashion is expanding its product portfolio with the strategic launch of its New B2B platform, F2FMart. With a renewed effort of serving the textile industry, the apparel and fashion industry remains at the heart of the 20-year-old company.
The company is now in the process of empowering wholesale businesses through its new B2B platform with access to digital tools and incentives to sell their ready-to-ship products worldwide and thereby grow their customer base with its reach of 600,000 registered companies globally.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the worldwide fashion and luxury industry saw a 60-70% reduction in sales and over 25% of fashion MSMEs in South and Southeast Asia shut their businesses. As the industry was trying to navigate the challenging landscape, Fibre2Fashion launched F2FMART, a platform dedicated to helping businesses leverage its digital channels for stock liquidation as well as to build resiliency and sustainable growth.
With over 100 merchants and MSMEs getting on board so far, the platform has partnered with leading manufacturers Mothercare and Zalando from U.K., PDS Trading Shanghai, India-based Global Textiles, Manisha Fashion, Anjali Fabrics, and Spinning King, amongst many other sellers onboarding the platform now. F2FMART’s sellers have a total estimated inventory worth INR 500 million to offer.
“We provide innovative marketing tools that help textile and apparel manufacturing companies and wholesalers, with ready to sell material, to reach the right buyers, at the right time and best price,” says Adi Kapadia, Head of e-commerce at Fibre2Fashion.
International sellers can build a virtual store on F2FMART for their ready-to-sell stock. The store is dynamically upgraded, and its marketing is done online and through periodic virtual trade fairs organised on the Fibre2Fashion platform to receive exclusive buyers’ inquiry.
“We offer real-time connection with personalised buying experience, covering our vast international database of online buyers, including enterprises, buying houses, design, product merchandising and sourcing agents. Plus, there is back-end support through online chat and F2F customer support team to solve queries and facilitate increased buyer-seller transactions,” adds Kapadia.
As the consultancy firm Bain predicts that digital shopping will be 30% of total sales by 2025 (up from 12% in 2019), the change in consumer behaviour with respect to online shopping is here to stay. Moreover, the pandemic has also given rise to new opportunities in areas such as demands for work-from-home wear, PPE, and other essential goods. Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to embrace digitisation and capitalise on new pandemic-related customer acquisition opportunities.
In the current times of business upheaval, the impact of COVID-19 continues to cause disruption. E-commerce is only going to get bigger going forward. There is no denying that for some companies even survival may be a huge struggle. But progressive industry players are looking at rapidly testing and iterating solutions and transitioning to an agile approach.
“Navigating this uncertain period won’t be easy but businesses that will adapt to the constantly evolving digital world to meet consumer needs will be able to emerge in the next normal with renewed energy. Through F2FMART, we aim to help businesses do just that and a lot more,” explained Jose Daniel, Director at Fibre2Fashion.com.
Adopting the right e-commerce marketing strategy for each of its associated companies and helping them liquidate excess inventory amid the COVID crisis are F2FMART’s core focus areas, and it ensures to do it right through a digital lens.
Mr Jigar Patel, Owner, East Asia Textile Technology Limited, and one of Fibre2Fashion’s most valuable long-term merchants, added, “We are glad to be associated with Fibre2Fashion for almost 6 years now. The platform is very helpful to promote textile products in international markets. We have received many useful business leads through them. We are thankful to team Fibre2Fashion for their continued support and assistance.”
