The exponential growth of online fashion sales has cooled a bit since the pandemic, but it's important that companies prepare now for a coming growth spurt, says Gregor Baumeister, director of warehousing and distribution at Beumer Group.

Many of the fashion companies that Beumer Group worked with prior to the pandemic were pure retailers. Of course, store access was disrupted during the shutdown, so online sales shot up tremendously.

“Some of our customers were experiencing growth rates of way over a hundred percent monthly,” Baumeister says. “This was putting a completely new demand and stress on their distribution centers in terms of fulfillment and capabilities to service this channel.” 

Online sales have certainly declined a bit since then, Baumeister says. Retail has come back somewhat, and inflation has reduced spending, but he expects an upswing sometime in 2024.

Meanwhile, the focus is on driving productivity and efficiency in existing processes, and intelligently applying automation to deal with the continuing labor shortage. “We're looking at solutions that are flexible to scale, to grow, and to service the different sales and distribution channels — brick and mortar, omnichannel, as well as e-commerce.”

As for solutions needed to deal with the predicted growth in sales, Baumeister advises against making big investment moves, at least initially. “I would say a smart way to prepare is to apply solutions that are modular and extendable, that can grow with a business. That way you have the opportunity to invest when you need to invest with, of course, a little bit of foresight. You have a certain implementation time, but you don't need to jump in with huge investments right from the start. Map out a plan, and then as things develop, you basically activate segments of that plan as your business grows.”