Leahy-backed Anatwine reveals 'biggest change in online fashion retail in a decade'

The company said it is “in negotiation, contracted or live” with 150 of the world’s top 200 fashion brands and retailers to provide a service that allows brands to display the optimum stock mix in real time on retailers’ ecommerce platforms.

Traditionally, multi-brand retailers have been limited by budget and warehouse space to offer a fraction of a brand’s product range online, which is selected ahead of season. That means the ecommerce offer is not always reflective of a brand’s best-selling products as the season progresses.

Anatwine claimed that can often lead to “a limited and often sub-optimal stock mix”, which “negatively impacts the customer experience”, particularly if a customer orders an item which is later found to be out of stock.

But Anatwine’s technology analyses sales data to assist retailers and brands in presenting “the perfect stock mix” to its customers at all times and fulfil online orders.  

Anatwine, which was founded by former SuperGroup e-commerce director Chris Griffin, said the likes of House of Fraser, Next and Superdry are among the retailers it is working with to improve the experience of customers using its ecommerce platforms.

Fundamental transformation

Ex-Tesco boss and Anatwine non-executive director Terry Leahy said: “Wholesale processes have remained substantially unchanged within fashion retail for decades. Yet within a couple of years, Anatwine has developed a proposition that is set to fundamentally transform the fashion retail model across the world. 

“By introducing real-time data transparency, with guaranteed customer experience and service levels, Anatwine is opening up opportunities for both retailers and brands to drive up sales, improve reputation and provide consumers globally with the product they want when they want it.”

Euan Sutherland, chief executive of SuperGroup, which has been working with Anatwine for two years as an investor and customer, added: “Anatwine forms a key part of our wholesale partner programme, complementing our other traditional wholesale relationships. 

“Working with Anatwine has enabled Superdry to increase materially the size and relevance of the product range available via online retailers while guaranteeing high levels of availability and so enhancing the end to end customer experience.

“As a result, Superdry is seeing significant sales momentum from a number of leading online retailers across the world.”