How do you choose the right Digital Showroom solution? The Ultimate Checklist

1. Why is fashion industry expertise important when choosing a digital showroom provider?
Fashion is a unique industry. It helps if your digital showroom provider understands the issues you might face and challenges you want to solve. Consider:
- How experienced is the team with fashion?
- Do they have experience transforming sales teams from the traditional way of selling into a digital one?
- Which other brands have successfully worked with them?
- Does the company offer specific services to help you get the most out of the software?

2. How important is product usability for your sales team?
Very important! Change is hard enough already. If the digital showroom product is not intuitive enough, it will be even harder to convince the sales team to sell digitally. The software needs to be incredibly easy to use. Even better: it needs to be a joy to use!

3. What kind of customer experience do you want to create?
This is an area that is often overlooked when deciding on digital showroom software. It’s important to consider: what kind of experience do you want to offer your customers?
- Is it the branded environment & storytelling?
- Is it engagement & relationship building?
- Or is it purely transactional?
- Where will these connections take place: in the showroom or remotely, or perhaps a combination of both?
--> The answers to those questions will be key in deciding which software to go for.

4. Should price be the main decision factor? 
Price always matters, yes. But if you ask us, what is equally important is the value that the technology will bring to your business. Put extra effort into mapping the value of digital transformation for your wholesale business. Optimize for value potential, not price reduction. There will always be an element of investment needed before you can see value in ROI.

5. Why does innovation matter when choosing a software vendor?
You want to choose a digital showroom software vendor that will continue to innovate. The world is changing at such a rapid pace that innovation needs to be baked into the culture. What are the areas the company is looking to innovate in? How does that match your business objectives? Which pain points could the company solve for you? And how willing is the company to work together with you to innovate on that? At Fashion Cloud, we are constantly developing our Digital Showroom solution.

6. What makes technology “credible” in this context?
You want to go for a company that takes technology seriously, with a focus on value creation for you, the brand. Some handy questions to consider here are:
- Can the software run on different devices?
- Does it enable in-showroom appointments as well as virtual selling appointments?
- How will you be integrating with the software?
- How often does the company release new features?

We hope this checklist helps guide your journey toward the right digital showroom solution.
For even more insights check out our latest webinar on Digital Showrooms with Álvaro Pin (On) and Luna Visscher-Laysiepen (Fashion Cloud).