Jack & Jones launches SS21 offer to global teams via live-stream

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 3, 2020

As fashion retailers navigate the new normal, more and more of them are turning to digital as a way to not only sell their products to consumers but to launch collections to buyers and sales teams within their own companies.

The latest is Jack & Jones, which is owned by Danish giant Bestseller. On Friday it said a “revolutionary” chapter has been written in the brand’s history with its first digital collection launch. 

It has live-streamed its spring 2021 collection launch to Jack & Jones staff from 21 countries around the world in a major digital event that was first conceived two months ago while the lockdown was at its height.

“Our original plan was to have our global sales team in Denmark for this collection meeting, but this was turned upside down because of Covid-19, so we decided to go 100% digital and create the ultimate digital collection meeting,” said brand sales director Dennis Birk Jørgensen.

The launch of the technology solution comes after Italian giant OTB last month unveiled a digital showroom for its brands, including major jeans label Diesel. It allows wholesale customers to see the products and place orders without ever having to leave their offices (or their homes if they're still working from home).

Live-streaming has also been used by British luxury label Burberry, which created a direct-to-consumer event during the lockdown in China to promote its accessories offer and found it attracted an audience of millions rather than the tens of thousands it had expected.

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

Jack & Jones meanwhile said that, despite its live-streaming idea seeming simple, there were complications. “In the beginning of this project, we spoke with people from outside Bestseller with experience within live-streaming and they told us that what we wanted to do was not possible,” said Mikael Mørkholt Rasmussen. He manages the brand’s digital B2B team, which was in charge of the project from start to finish.

But the company pulled it all together using what it called “an experimental mindset” and a combination of internal resources and the digital tools at hand.

What this ended up as was a two-day series of live-streams from the brand’s HQ in Brande. Some 20 hours of content was broadcast from 16 different showrooms via Direct technology.

The event comprised individual streams, plus corresponding Q&A sessions via Microsoft Teams and numerous pre-produced videos – including one with Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen. Bestseller chief Anders Holch Povlsen and Jack & Jones brand director Anders Gam made live appearances.

On day two, the firm’s Junior and Footwear teams organised additional live-streams with their sales teams in country offices and countries also used live-streaming to run their external collection meetings.

The success of the experiment means that in the future, the brand will be working with two different live-streaming options: a simple ‘plug-and-play’ solution that can be easily implemented on a day-to-day basis and an advanced live-stream solution for bigger events.

“The huge win for us with this project is that everyone has now become much more comfortable with setting up and using live-streaming on a day-to-day basis. It creates a much greater sense of togetherness with colleagues or customers than other remote solutions, although there is always room for a good old-fashioned face-to-face meeting,” Dennis Birk Jørgensen said.