Our adaptation to the new normal has spurred rapid growth in online marketplaces. Consumers and businesses are more open to different types of transactions than ever before as a result of the foundation set by marketplace giants, such as eBay and Amazon.
With the emergence of Amazon Business, as well as the B2C market, we see that both sectors have accelerated rapidly. As businesses ensure they remain on top of digitisation, you may be wondering, "How can we distinguish ourselves, especially as manufacturers?".
For us to design a great customer experience, we must understand the behaviour of the customers. Clayton M. Christensen is best known for his theory of "disruptive innovation", which not only argues that businesses must carry out technological innovation in product development, business model development, and predicting the future but also outlines the elements they must be aware of along the way.
Having studied how leading companies fail to stay at the top of their respective industries when technologies or markets change, he stressed the importance of understanding customers' needs and creating new transactions.
Harvard Business Review writers Clifford Maxwell and Scott Duke Kominers summarised it as follows:
Clay Christensen’s seminal theory of disruptive innovation offers guidance. While many marketplace businesses simply organize and facilitate transactions among current market participants, disruptive marketplaces create new types of transactions that draw in buyers or sellers (or both) who weren’t already participating in the market.
If you're not aware of the Marketplace 100, you should be. It ranks the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace startups and private companies. eBay, Airbnb, and Uber would come to mind when we think about the most influential companies surrounding the world economy over the past few decades.
Despite that, a number of largely unfamiliar names make the list. 76% of consumer spending is accounted for by 4 of the marketplace startups.
In the fashion and apparel industry, we can examine the companies that have a considerable impact. The industry has been transformed by startups like Poshmark (number 6 on the list) and StockX (number 10 on the list). They are both marketplaces for second-hand products.
StockX and Poshmark successfully differentiate themselves through their product offerings (casual and trendy clothing for Poshmark, and hyped-up items for StockX). In addition, their user experiences are also very different. As opposed to Poshmark's well-organised and comprehensive online shop, StockX shows the current prices of hot products like stocks on the stock exchange.
Customer values and needs are considered throughout the entire process at these companies. As a result, they created new forms of transactions.
During the pandemic, fashion houses presented more and more of their collections online. They achieved their success by working with companies such as Fabricant and by using programs such as CLO3D.
But the question arises, will 3D renders be good enough for new seasons that incorporate 3D? Is it good enough to communicate the fabric's physics?
Do manufacturers, especially those in the denim industry, stand to gain from these new kinds of transactions?
In trying to find a solution, we thought, "Why not create a project that would address this issue?"
This led to INDIKON being created - digitising denim fabric for digital garments and digital laundry. With the digital fabric, manufacturers can sell with a link, and designers can experiment with their designs first digitally. With INDIKON, we hope to create a new landscape and solution for the industry.
