Who’s Next trade show: Will wholesale save fashion?

As the summer heat embraced Paris, Who’s Next opened its doors to the
fashion industry for a particularly lively edition, held from 2 to 4
September. FashionUnited shared its experience.

At the entrance, security checked visitors’ badges and identities
several times. Not just anyone can enter this “temple of wholesale”, as the
organisers call it. Once through the gates, the welcome warmed up. An
American school bus had taken its place in front of the main gates to
celebrate the start of the new school year with music. It was barely 10am
and already karaoke was blasting out sounds of the moment, delighting a
group of young girls. A little further on, a DJ was mixing, high up in
front of his turntables, facing foodtrucks that would soon sharpen your
appetite.

Through the doors, you entered a tunnel made of crumpled paper, scented
with bubblegum and decorated with playground-style tags. The cheerful,
back-to-school theme managed to draw visitors in, while echoing the current
dynamism of the wholesale distribution channel.

Wholesale: a winning channel

According to a 2023 study by Joor, a digital wholesale platform,
international fashion brands are forecasting 27 percent growth in their
wholesale channels this year. What’s more, in 2023, sales are even expected
to increase in this channel: 75 percent of brands said that the proportion
of their business coming from wholesale was the same or higher than last
year, while 33 percent reported a shift from retail to wholesale.

Among the advantages of the wholesale channel, the penetration of new
markets is a topical one because it meets an economic objective of the
government, announced at the end of August by Olivier Becht, minister
delegate for Foreign Trade, Attractiveness and the French abroad. The
project: a new export plan worth 125 million euros over four years. The aim
is to increase the number of French companies exporting by 2030 – from
150,000 to 200,000.

Against this backdrop, the attendance of Olivia Grégoire, minister for
small and medium-sized enterprises, trade, craft trades and tourism, to the
fair was an “important gesture of recognition for the sector”, wrote Yann
Rivoallan, president of the Fédération du Prêt à Porter, on his Linkedin
account. In France, the clothing sector recorded a 12 percent increase in
exports between January and June 2023 compared to the same period in 2022
(figures gathered by the Institut Français de la Mode from French
Customs).

However, it’s no secret that clothing retailers (excluding luxury goods)
are experiencing difficulties, with waves of receiverships and declines in
clothing and textile sales compared with the pre-covid period.
“Increasingly reconsidered by brands, wholesale is once again at the heart
of the market and is proving to be a profitable strategy,” read the trade
show press release.

For Sylvie Pourrat, director of the WSN Offer, wholesale is first and
foremost a question of visibility. She stated: “Today, we’re really in a
scenario where we need to make ourselves visible to as many people as
possible. Everyone can travel, but not everyone does, everyone can go
everywhere, but not everyone does. We realise that we are often at home
ordering on the internet. So at some point, we need to be in places where
the multidisciplinary public converges, we need to get into the department
stores, to go where we won’t necessarily open boutiques but where we’ll
find an ecosystem that’s a little broader than the neighbourhood in which
we position ourselves when we open our own boutique.”

Pourrat further explained: “The way wholesale works is also changing.
Before, a wholesale model was written according to a mathematical equation,
with a margin calculation, etc. Today, all that is being rebuilt.” She
pointed in particular to the arrival of digital native vertical brands
(DNVB) on the wholesale scene, who are organising pop-ups in department
stores such as Le Bon Marché or Galeries Lafayette, whereas their basic
model is more focused on direct-to-consumer. “That’s what’s interesting
today,” continued Pourrat, “to see this model being readjusted in line with
market needs.”

Who’s Next, a gateway to the international market

Who’s Next has been a flagship wholesale event for almost 30 years now,
serving as a gateway to the world for French brands, but it is now
attracting far more than just French companies. This was reflected in
attendance, for which 58 percent of exhibitors came from abroad (compared
to 51 percent at the January edition).

On the stand of the pretty Brazilian brand Marie Mercié, they spoke of
their desire to establish themselves in France and Europe, while Maria
Pavan, a brand from the same country, declared on Instagram that they had
“done some good business” and that the label would now be in “many places
around the world”. Finally, Chinese label Fenggy was delighted to have met
buyers from India, Spain, the USA and France.

For the first time, Who’s Next welcomed a Chinese delegation, the Chic
Expo show. And with it some 20 brands that are well established in China,
some of which already have 2,000 shops in the country.

”It was not without effort that we worked on this area,” confided Sylvie
Pourrat. “But I’ve put all my energy into it over the last six months
because I wanted to create a counterweight to the Shein controversy, which
is a real controversy. Everyone has an idea about Chinese fashion, but no
one knows what it’s really like. And I think it’s always good to be able to
talk about it, to discuss it, to argue about it or not, to defend certain
positions when you have the right information to do so. I was keen to show
that Chinese fashion is also about organised groups who are committed to
sustainability. They have 2,000 shops, but China isn’t France, so they have
to think big. It’s not the quantity of shops that leads to a loss of
quality.”

For the Chinese organisation, the objective is clear. “We want to pass
on a message of cultural exchange via the Who’s Next platform and raise the
profile of Chinese fashion,” Liu Yan, organiser of Beijing Fashion Expo,
the company behind the China International Clothing & Accessories Fair
(CHIC), told FashionUnited. “We want to show Europeans what Chinese
creativity is all about.”

Some of the brands in the Made in China section have found potential
local partners in Europe and the Middle East. But beyond the contracts, the
presence of these labels, which are already very popular in China, is an
opportunity for them to get their first foreign feedback, to see how their
collections are received in France and internationally, and to familiarise
themselves with the methods of doing business in Europe, particularly as
regards exports.

The range on offer in the CHIC pavilion reflects an aesthetic that
combines oriental and international inspiration. The style of the K-Boxing
and Joeone brands, for example, is very modern. Some of the exhibiting
companies are already working with European designers to develop their
collections.

Another foreign player to join Who’s Next this season is Neonyt. After
taking part in January with an information stand, the German show was a
concrete player in this new edition, bringing with it 12 so-called
“eco-responsible” brands. The organisers expect this figure to double by
the next edition in January 2024.

However, to meet brands that are aware of environmental issues and
produce collections that consume fewer natural resources, there was no need
to visit the Neonyt space, or the Impact space, also dedicated to the
subject. Many of the ready-to-wear manufacturers exhibiting at the show
have integrated a reduction in the use of natural resources into their
processes.

Les Racines du Ciel, an ethical ready-to-wear brand that had been
exhibiting under the Impact banner for several seasons, asked to be
repositioned in its original creative space, the “Fame”. They were
therefore found outside the Neonyt brand pool.

Sissel Edelbo is another example of a committed brand in the Fame zone.
This Danish label offers upcycled collections in which each piece is
unique. The brand is currently enjoying great success and has just moved
into the Bon Marché. It was created in 2004, but “things have really taken
off in the last three years” said Pierre-Henri Bernex, sales and marketing
associate at the Trendsetteuse showroom.

Whereas in the past, brands presented as sustainable did not want to be
mixed in with labels considered to be more polluting, now, in fashion,
style wins out. “It’s the truth of the market that speaks,” said Sylvie
Pourrat.

Careful selection

This season, the show announced a “reinforced selection” of its 1,200
exhibitors. “We’re facing an influx of requests of all kinds,” explained
Sylvie Pourrat. “Not because we’re the best, but because we’re more or less
the only European show that counts for women’s fashion. Our so-called
competitor shows are struggling to recover. As a result, Who’s Next has
become, by default, the international event that people ask for. That’s
great, except that it’s not the mass and quantity that makes our show what
it is, but the message that the selection delivers. For 30 years, we’ve
built our business around the fact that we have to meet the needs of known
markets. We know what we’re missing, it could be the curvy woman, etc.” The
“reinforced selection” was therefore guided by the need to rematerialise
the market segments that needed it.

This careful curation was presented in a setting packed with
entertainment – chewing gum bar, bag bar, karaoke, Doctor Love’s booth,
etc. There was no shortage of activities. “People come looking for
inspiration and moments,” said Pourrat, adding that the organisers’ mission
is to “work on the emotional side of things”.

More experiential than ever, the September 2023 edition of Who’s Next
reflected the current objective of multi-brand shops, department stores and
concept shops: to offer buyers an emotion, to inspire them and make them
want to buy.

This article originally appeared on
FashionUnited.FR.
Translation and edit by: Rachel Douglass.

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