Fashion / Apparel & Accessories : how we digitalize product information of a sector

Today, with digital development and new sales channels, companies are in front of many challenges, including the dematerialization of information and the growing need of product data quality

To help the textile industry to better understand the challenges of the product sheet, GS1 France works with market actors (suppliers, solutions providers, distributors, etc.) on the modeling of a product sheet. Fit Retail has joined this working group to share its experience gained by collaborating with many fashion actors.

Why a working team ?

We have decided to sign this partnership to exchange and share the sector’s needs around product information, in order to standardize the attributes. This approach will also make it possible to optimize the exchange of information between brands, manufacturers and distributors, but also to improve the data quality delivered to the final consumer.

What are the main challenges ?

• • Improving of time-to-market
• • Efficiency gain
• • Reduction of issues
• • Improving of customer’s satisfaction
• • Better control of brand image
• • Accessibility to new markets

What are we doing?

We started during our last meeting to identify needs and data which are common at all sector products. We all agree that it’s essential to have a common taxonomy and semantics to improve efficiency and clarity.

We are working at this time for Man/women/Kid fashion et afterwards for lingerie, underwear and sporswear.In the near future, all sectors of the supply chain including shoes and accessories will be also involved in these changes.

To develop the Core Model**, we compare the data provided by differents contributors in order to define which are, for the differents sector’s product, the attributes common for an efficiency publication of the product sheet in the GDSN (Global Data Synchronization Network). The objective for brands is to exchange and publish with distributors and partners a standard and unique product sheet. A single quality product sheet for all your customers from all you suppliers – the GDSN network brings together more than 34 certified catalogues.

We will continue the work at our next meeting.

To join the group, you can contact Isabelle Chastel by email isabelle.chastel@gs1.org or by phone at 06 81 79 07 10.

*In IT, taxonomy refers to a method of informations’ classification in an evolutionary structured architecture. The term is commonly used for content management systems (CMS).

**Core Model : The Core Model refers to all things which can be common and shared (process, management rules, data model, referentials…) through information systems common to different websites or company’s entities.

About GS1 France

With 40 000 members companies in France and 1,5 million in the world, GS1 mission in 150 countries, since more of 40 years, to standardize technologies to simplify, optimize and secure informations exchanges between companies.

Present in more of 15 sectors, GS1 France suggests to market players a collaboration space to co-design standards and solutions which reply to business challenges around three key business areas : digitalized product, interconnected supply chain and omni-channel trade.