Tim de Jong and Elisa Barbadoro are buyers at legendary multi-brand luxury boutique Verso. The company has a flagship store in Antwerp and two smaller stores in the Belgian port city of Knokke. FashionUnited met the two buyers to talk about the ordering process, trends and the next generation of luxury customers.
“Verso has traditionally been very focused on Italian fashion,” says de Jong, “but that has evolved a lot in the last five years, also under the influence of streetwear. We have more and more young US brands like Amiri, and also Paris is more important to us than it used to be.In short, Verso’s fashion image is much more international than it used to be,and that has a lot to do with social media.Sometimes you see a smaller brand suddenly appear, and then suddenly it becomes a huge hype Then we’ll see if we can make something out of it.A good example is Gallery Dept, a label that’s really booming in the US We picked it up with Verso two years ago and now there’s one in the Benelux too great demand for it.”
How does the ordering process work at Verso?
De Jong: Beforehand, we hold detailed discussions about the budget. We monitor sales and sales figures on a weekly basis and make our budget proposals based on these figures. With these proposals we go to the management. Once the budget is set, we start talking to the brands. This is seldom easy. We work with the big luxury groups, with Kering and LVMH, and you always have to be careful there. We always try to find an agreement. Unfortunately, some brands sometimes sell less well and we have to take that into account when shopping. The luxury groups expect growth of ten percent every season. We sometimes tend to be ‘shallow’ when it comes to shopping. Then you have to find a diplomatic solution. For example, sometimes you invest a little more in the men’s collection and a little less in the women’s collection, or vice versa. But Verso’s overall budget needs to be in line with the companies’ growth forecasts. Otherwise you risk losing a brand to a competitor. The more brands in a group we sell, the easier it can be to integrate a new brand from this group. That is the reality at the moment.
Does that leave room for creativity?
De Jong: You have to try to find them within the brand, within the collection. Of course we always have room in our budget for new brands.”
What happens after the budgets are agreed?
De Jong: Then we go into the showrooms, make a selection and finalize the order. Sometimes another order follows and we put the different collections side by side so we don’t buy too much of the same product. We also take our VIP customers into consideration. We try to talk to them about the collections in advance and if they are interested in specific pieces we make sure we order them. Verso has about a hundred VIP customers. But ultimately, all customers are important to us. In our company we really have a lot of conversations with customers and this feedback helps us to move forward.
What trends can be observed?
De Jong: Quiet Luxury The logos are now quietly disappearing anyway. Denim is also still a trend. Pastel tones. You can tell that customers are now looking for ‘clean’, more formal items.
Barbadoro: Women combine more labels. They used to stay loyal to a single brand, but today they choose more anyway. They are also more interested in smaller brands than they used to be.
De Jong: We follow fashion weeks, catwalk shows and trends, but we also think about the big picture. There’s a clear difference between what you see on the catwalks in Paris, Milan or New York and what’s hanging in our stores. After all, we are a company in Belgium and the consumers here are a bit more conservative. They are also price conscious. We take that into account. What is still affordable for our customers?
Fashion is becoming more and more expensive, especially in the luxury sector
De Jong: Since lockdown, we’ve noticed that prices have really gone up. It doesn’t make a difference to our margins, but personally I think it’s a shame that someone who used to be able to buy sneakers from us now has to step out. We’re also seeing a lot of deferred buying behavior this season. But this is not only due to the higher prices for clothing. There are other factors too, the war, inflation, energy prices. But of course there is also a group of people who just keep buying.
How did you get out of the Covid tunnel?
De Jong: Relatively well. Our collaboration with our online partner Farfetch has evolved and continued to grow. We also launched our own webshop and became more active on Instagram. In the days when we were able to open stores, we sold more per customer than ever before. And we negotiated with brands to take fewer deliveries so we could generate ‘healthy’ resale.
Are you also thinking about the next generation of customers?
De Jong: Exactly. The new generation is critical and that is definitely a challenge. Brand image is important to them. Do they want to be associated with a brand or not? They are also much less loyal to brands. There is more turnover. We used to work mainly with the established Italian values, but now we have moved to a much more mixed offer, for example with a lower price segment. This mixture of high and somewhat low price segment works very well. We also buy very broadly within the brands. I can sell a very trendy piece of Prada to an eighteen-year-old and at the same time a nice blazer, also from Prada, to a seventy-year-old. We also follow social media very closely. What are the trends? Sometimes it’s very quick. Then we buy a new brand and after a season or two there is no longer any demand for it. Unfortunately, because the ideal for us is always long-term cooperation with a brand.
This translated article originally appeared on FashionUnited.nl