It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that many industries have needed to be agile in changing their selling processes. Making appointments to visit with customers and present a selection of products to them is, for now, a thing of the past.

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For those brands that work seasonally, the start of the lockdown for many countries coincided with the Spring/Summer 2021 build-up. Many questions were raised around how brands would launch the new product range, and how their sales teams would introduce it to their customers. With a large proportion of the global workforce relocating to work from home, it became apparent very quickly that a digital sales solution would be needed. One that was straightforward to implement, supported the selling process and would be easy to utilise in an online meeting forum such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

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One brand who identified this need very early on was Kontoor, the global lifestyle apparel company whose iconic brands include Wrangler and Lee. Kontoor were keen to learn how our aWorkbook app could be used by their EMEA sales teams to replace face to face meetings with their customers. Right from the start they were clear about what they needed from a digital sales tool: to be flexible in their online interactions with their customers, and to allow the sales reps to really focus in on what their customers needed when presenting the range to them. From linking Key Outfit items together and including fit guides and videos on the product pages, to using pre-saved assortments and brand collateral to showcase the product offering – we were confident that we could provide a useful and intuitive solution that their sales teams could pick up quickly ready for the upcoming SS21 season.

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Time was of the essence so once Kontoor gave the go ahead, we set up a dedicated project team and detailed action plan. The Brand Marketing teams at both Lee and Wrangler really engaged with the process and were brilliant at pulling everything together from their side. It was exciting to see the project evolve as we explored different avenues that the catalogues could take, particularly when it came to offering tailored product ranges to sales teams based on which product segments they needed to see. Time may have been short, but everyone really rose to the challenge!