Digital wholesale management platform JOOR has added another outfit to its wardrobe. Already serving business-to-business (B2B) buyers and sellers in the luxury spaces, it’s now expanding into bridal. The company announced on Dec. 14 that it will now also focus on bridal salons and their relationships with all the industry’s brands.
“It really made a lot of sense for us to help out the bridal industry, which doesn’t use a lot of digital, but does involve a lot of small businesses needing to travel to showrooms, shows or market weeks in order to figure out their dress assortments,” Kristin Savilia, CEO at JOOR, told PYMNTS. “For JOOR to step in there with our digital solution just makes a lot of sense, for us to automate there and simplify and bring analytics to the same way we did in the luxury [space].”
Covering Every Channel
Just as the pandemic shut down travel to shows for a time, it also delayed a lot of weddings. Now, couples are making up for lost time. At the same time, buyers are questioning the need to attend as many trade shows as they did before the pandemic.
JOOR offers solutions for both. In addition to its marketplace, it has an iPad app that’s meant to be used at trade shows or showrooms. The marketplace itself can serve as a virtual showroom that can be shopped without a sales rep. For deals that do require a rep, it incorporates a tool that enables two parties to log in, see the same screen and collaborate on the sale.
“We feel like we have every channel covered to be digital and to simplify this process,” Savilia said.
Providing Visibility and Transparency
To help retailers see a full view of the image, JOOR added 360-degree imagery in 2020 with its partner ORB360, and 3D in 2021 in partnership with VNTANA. This enables buyers to see the style detail of the items.
“As a former buyer, I’ll tell you that the current buying process without a platform is very siloed,” Savilia said. “You go to a showroom, you get a paper line sheet, you take your own photos of stuff, and then you leave that showroom and you’re in another showroom, and there’s no real easy way to look back.”
With JOOR, buyers can see their buys, what’s delivering when, and sort them in the way they want to see them — all of the ivory A-line dresses arriving in January, for example. With delivery dates on the platform, buyers and sellers can avoid the emails and texts that would otherwise be required.
“It’s a communication vehicle, among other things,” Savilia said. “When you change communication to digital into a single ecosystem, everybody wins — the visibility and transparency is transformative.”
Providing Value to Both Sides
She added that JOOR’s approach to industries is vertical; they go into an industry, learn the nuances and then get everyone involved in the same ecosystem. For example, JOOR has 75% market share in luxury fashion.
“We build the ecosystem up on both sides by providing value to both sides,” Savilia explained. “We’re very excited about this approach into bridal to really work together to grow that ecosystem.”
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