Beyond omnichannel: How to scale profitably across channels

The fashion landscape is in constant flux, shaped by dynamic consumer demands and an ever-evolving digital ecosystem. To truly thrive, brands must deeply understand and be ready to quickly adapt to the diverse expectations of key demographics while strategically navigating a complex multi-channel environment.

Two distinct generations are currently defining fashion commerce:

Gen Z: The digital natives. This cohort is mobile-first, innovation-hungry, and expects seamless omnichannel experiences as standard. They're quick to abandon brands that don't meet their lofty expectations and demonstrate lower brand loyalty, often preferring to discover new brands, especially if the price is right. Their digital fluency and insatiable desire for novelty demand agile and genuinely engaging brand interactions.

Silver Spenders: The overlooked powerhouse. Often underestimated, this group is driving nearly half of global spending growth this year. They possess significant wealth and resilience, and their shopping habits truly support strong margins: they favour trusted multi-brand e-commerce platforms and tend to remain loyal to brands that consistently deliver tangible value.

These two groups represent the full spectrum of demands brands must address – from hyper-personalised, mobile-first discovery to dependable, high-value experiences. Mastering unified commerce unequivocally means serving both ends without compromise.

Fashion e-commerce in Europe is decisively omnichannel, requiring brands to strategically engage across multiple digital touchpoints:

Own.com channels: Rapidly growing, projected to reach €102 billion by 2027, making up over half of all online fashion sales. This is where brands gain maximum control, invaluable data, and the highest margins.

Marketplaces (e.g., Zalando, Amazon): Absolutely essential for reach and discovery, already contributing €32 billion to GMV and approximately a quarter of the market. These platforms offer unparalleled scale.

Social commerce: Exploding with a projected 14% CAGR over the next four years. Driven by Gen Z and influencer culture, it's not just an engagement channel but a serious conversion powerhouse.

To truly master unified commerce, brands need to know precisely how to play – and scale – across all three.

While the omnichannel opportunity is undeniably massive, execution across these diverse channels presents significant challenges, particularly in logistics.

The cost of entry: 10-15 years ago, home delivery, free shipping, and real-time tracking were competitive advantages. Today? 80% of shoppers consider them "table stakes" (FedEx report). Failure to meet these basic expectations risks scathing reviews and lost customers, while customer acquisition costs continue to skyrocket.

Impact on visibility: On multi-brand platforms, fast and reliable delivery isn't just about satisfaction – it directly affects catalogue visibility. Products meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are ranked higher, receive premium delivery badges, and truly stand out in filtered searches. For example, brands on Zalando consistently delivering can see up to 3x higher visibility.

Conversion killer: An average of 14% of customers abandon their basket if their preferred delivery option isn't available (Zalando, 2022–23).

Loyalty driver: Post-purchase logistics are absolutely crucial for loyalty. Late or fragmented deliveries erode trust and utterly waste valuable acquisition spend. What was once a differentiator is now simply an expectation.

The complexity of logistics has exploded with each new sales channel adding yet another layer of fragmentation. Many brands still attempt to manage operations end-to-end themselves, but delivering at scale – across borders, with consistent speed and service – is no longer feasible for most to attempt alone.

To truly master unified commerce, brands must be present across all three major digital channels, but they certainly shouldn't be treated equally.

Marketplaces: Drive reach and scale, ideal for discovery and volume, but often at the cost of margin and data ownership.

Social commerce: Booming, especially among younger shoppers. Mobile-native, trend-driven, and fast-moving, but also algorithm-dependent and constantly shifting.

Your own.com: The most strategic channel. It offers the highest margins, richest customer insights, and full control over pricing, branding, and experience. It's unequivocally where long-term loyalty is built. When scaling globally, your e-commerce site is the most flexible and profitable channel you own.

More than just a sales channel, your own.com should be the brain of your entire commerce setup. It's where you define core systems: pricing, inventory, and customer data. Building your commerce stack around it creates a single source of truth that powers every other channel – from marketplaces to TikTok Shop. It also becomes your foundational bedrock for innovation – from AI tools to dynamic inventory. Because you simply cannot personalise, optimise, or scale what you don't own or genuinely understand.

The best customer experience in fashion today isn’t defined by individual brands; it’s being set by industry giants like Zalando and Amazon. They've spent years shaping shopper expectations for:

• Convenience as standard: 82% of shoppers say it’s the #1 factor influencing where they buy online (Zalando insights).

• Localised experiences: Understanding and adapting to regional preferences (e.g., cash on delivery in Southern Europe, next-day refunds in the Nordics, parcel lockers in Poland).

Sustainability as a decision-maker: 60% of Gen Z shoppers genuinely intend to pay more for sustainable products (Zalando research). Bundled shipments and recyclable packaging are no longer optional extras.

Meeting these expectations demands robust infrastructure: understanding local preferences, working with a wide network of trusted regional carriers, and building a flexible setup that adapts rapidly to new channels, markets, or ever-changing customer needs.

The fashion industry quietly loses billions each year due to unsold inventory. Often, this isn't a demand problem but a distribution challenge – the right product stuck in the wrong place or siloed in the wrong channel. As brands scale across markets and sales touchpoints, fragmentation grows, leading to crippling inefficiency. That's precisely why unified stock visibility has become a key lever for both resilience and profitability.

When inventory is connected across borders and channels, brands can:

• Make faster replenishment decisions.

• Reduce split shipments.

• Improve sell-through without adding risk.

Even more crucial is a unified view of demand, enabling smart allocation – putting stock where it's most likely to convert, not just where it was originally planned. The path forward for many brands includes faster onboarding to new channels, more flexible contracts, and modular logistics setups that truly match the seasonality and speed of fashion itself. Unified stock isn’t just a backend fix – it’s a strategic move towards a more responsive, connected, and ultimately efficient commerce model.