Federico Bianchi and Andrea Fiume, co-founders, Bsamply, explain how their newborn B2B online platform could help fashion professionals manage their collections–from sourcing to selling.
How was Bsamply born?
We founded our company in 2017 in Los Angeles with the aim of revolutionizing the fashion industry. In this market searching, buying and selling raw materials is a challenging, time-consuming, inefficient and expensive process. The relationships among fabric and accessory suppliers, sales representatives and brands have remained almost unchanged and based upon personal relationships and obsolete technological systems. Raw material manufactures have large unsold quantities that are sometimes wasted or sold to wholesalers at a below-cost price.
Bsamply is a business-to-business platform that revolutionizes the way that textile, yarn, leather and accessory suppliers sell their materials to fashion brands. Instead of relying on a slow, expensive, and obsolete offline process, brands, designers can access an online platform to search and find everything they need within a couple of clicks. We wanted the Silicon Valley technology to be helpful for Italian tradition, creativity and high-quality products.
What are the main functions of your platform?
By using bsamply.com, brands have access to three different showrooms: the/Source showroom is already operating and can be used for finding and purchasing products and materials from the best suppliers; the/Produce showroom will be online by 2020 and will be available for brands to find and use a selected network of garment makers to produce their collections; the/Sell showroom will also be online by 2020 and will help insiders managing the sales of their collections and consolidating orders coming from retail buyers.
By re-reinventing the way suppliers and brands sell and buy excess inventory, Bsamply allows for a responsible sourcing of raw materials. The platform gives value to excess inventory, deadstock and leftovers that would be otherwise wasted or sold to wholesalers at a below-cost price. Brands and independent designers can responsibly source materials and order textiles and accessories without waiting for the manufacturing time and without additional costs related to the minimum amount of purchase. Both vendors and customers will benefit from this service, which aims to modernize the actual system, making it become a responsible, fast and round-the-clock selection procedure.
What are the benefits for a designer, a brand or a company deciding to use your platform?
Through Bsamply fabrics, leathers, accessories and packaging produced by the best manufacturing companies are available for consultation and online purchase on a single platform.
The main benefits for brands and designers include a simplification of insiders’ work steps. Through our platform they can search, find and purchase materials from a database of international suppliers that have been carefully selected and verified. Their processes can proceed faster, while direct communication between brands and suppliers can increase.
Geographical barriers can be reduced, as travel and supply chain costs can be cut.
On the other side, companies producing high-quality textiles, and accessories can sell their products through an online platform accessible 365 days a year, 24/7, anywhere in the world. This way they can increase their efficiency and turnover by targeting a wider international clientele. All the way from sampling to the final order, passing through the negotiation process and the customization of the materials, the whole sales process is managed in a virtual way.
Which companies are using the Source Showroom section already?
A variegated mix of brands is getting on the platform and trying our service. The sportswear market is especially showing interest as this industry’s sourcing process is very specific and in needs for technical materials. Among the first companies joining our platform were watersports and skiing outerwear specialists and sport lifestyle brands, especially from the US and Italy.
How many companies are using use your tool and how many could they become?
We have set ambitious targets, because, according to our data and market researches, thousands of professionals need a platform like ours. However, we are also aware that the digitization of an industry requires time. Right now, we have 250 brands on the platform. Our target is to reach 2,500 by the end of the year. Moreover, we have 50 suppliers on the various steps on the on-boarding process, with a target of having about 150 active suppliers by the end of 2019.
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