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VF Europe
press release

Fashion Giant VF to Optimize Retail Space with Visual Retailing’s Solutions. Initial focus on optimizing retail space in Europe for Lee and Vans brands

As one of the world’s most dynamic fashion companies, VF Europe knows how to stay on top of new jeans and sportswear trends and get them into the shops fast. The last critical step for VF Europe is optimizing retail space so that its clothes are displayed as attractively as possible to accelerate sales. In Europe, the company is expanding with multiple new monobrand stores and shop-in-shops or branded retail spaces in large department stores.

Starting with its brands Lee® and Vans®, VF Europe will use Visual Retailing’s innovative Mockshop solution to optimize sales space in existing and future stores. In addition, Mockshop will help the company improve communications with staff in its monobrand stores and shop-in-shops.

In a fiercely competitive market, VF Europe was looking for a tool that could adapt to, and keep pace with, its fast-moving processes to maintain its competitive advantage. Although the company was already working with a visualization tool, its complexity meant that only a limited number of staff could use it. As a result, VF Europe decided to evaluate a number of different visualization solutions, and found that Visual Retailing’s proven and powerful Mockshop software was the best solution for their requirements.

“We believe Visual Retailing is the right partner to help us move into a new era of retail optimization,” comments Lucien Smet, CIO at VF Europe. “Visual Retailing stands out from the crowd with its state-of-the-art technology as well as its deep knowledge of the complex worlds of fashion and retail.”

VF Europe is initially using Visual Retailing’s Mockshop solution to optimize sales space for the Lee and Vans brands European wide, including the Belgian and German Lee HQ and the English Vans HQ. Once these are up and running, VF Europe’s plans include extending the use of Mockshop to other brands within the group, and implementing Sampleroom, another module in Visual Retailing’s product suite. The Sampleroom solution consists of a visual storyboard, which is linked to a central picture and product database and a visual analysis tool, which helps to interactively slice and dice the product range displaying the answers as product pictures arranged in a grid.

Using Mockshop, merchandisers play with different layouts on their PC to see exactly how the collection, the point of sale graphics and the furniture itself will be arranged in the store and, because they are immersed in a virtual 3D world of the store, they can see the impact from the shopper’s point of view.

Unlike the more complicated solution that VF had been using, with Mockshop the user simply drags garments or graphics out of a collection and drops them onto the fixture's rail or shelf. With a simple mouse click, the clothes are automatically arranged on hangers or folded on a shelf or table. Once the retail space has been optimized, the user sends the planogram to store staff. The highly visual nature of the planogram eliminates any risk of misunderstandings about where products should be placed and minimizes the time needed by shop staff to display a new collection, enabling them to concentrate on selling the clothes.

During VF Europe’s product evaluations, it found that teams can collaborate and communicate more easily using Mockshop because it focuses on visuals rather than text, charts, and numbers. VF Europe can now ensure that shop-in-shop staff are utilizing the available retail space as efficiently as possible. The Mockshop solution also helps cut the costs of producing and sending sales books to staff in retail outlets.

Visual Retailing
Tom van Soest
Tel: 0031-23 55 18 522
tom.vansoest@visualretailing.nl

Press Contact:
HBI PR&MarCom GmbH
Antonia Contato
Tel: 0049 89 9938 8742
Email: antonia_contato@hbi.de