GS1 Fashion Base is officially launched in the Netherlands. Ten fashion retailers and suppliers will start working with the data platform in the coming months, which should simplify data exchange and provide more insight into the logistics and sales chain.
The first parties to start using GS1 Fashion Base are Bestseller, Dobotex, Euretco, Just Brands, Micro Fashion, PVH, Suitable, Van Tilburg Mode en Sport, Van Winkel Fashion and Wehkamp. In the coming period, they will make agreements on which article data participating parties want to exchange and their preferred method of exchange. GS1 Fashion Base acts as a data platform for sharing article information between supplier and retailer.
Easy sharing of article data in fashion
With faster-changing collections, smaller quantities, more frequent stocking and the online channel, the fashion sector is said to be eager for a simple data sharing solution, "If there is one sector known for adapting quickly to a new reality, it is fashion. This means a demand-driven chain and that is by definition a data-driven chain," GS1 Netherlands stated earlier.
The GS1 Fashion Base should provide an answer to this. According to GS1 Netherlands, it will be the central data pool for the fashion sector for exchanging item master data and enriched product data to support e-commerce and omnichannel business models. Besides product information, it will be possible to share photos and rich content between chain partners.
'The need is there'
"That so many companies want to participate and help make the data pool suitable for the sector shows that the need is there," explains Sebastiaan van Zundert, fashion project manager at GS1 Netherlands. "The sector has many smaller independent retailers and the data pool needs to be easy to use for these too. Therefore, there are various ways in which suppliers and retailers can supply or unlock article data. So even companies with few automation tools will have easy access to share article data with chain parties."
Sector-wide implementation GS1 Fashion Base
The aim of GS1 Netherlands, Icecat, Inretail, Modint and the companies that will now be the first to test is to achieve a working 'Proof Of Concept' so that, by the end of 2018, the data pool for fashion will be available for sector-wide implementation.
