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PVH has sold its digital showroom technology, part of in-house startup Stitch, to B2B fashion wholesale platform Fashion Cloud for an undisclosed sum. As PVH focuses on its core brands, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, the fashion-tech startup, which was built under PVH’s strategic investment programme, will scale within Fashion Cloud, another B2B fashion-tech platform.
Stitch’s digital showroom technology allows sales teams to display products digitally, getting rid of the piles of samples often required in the wholesale buying process. PVH created Stitch 3D, a B2B SaaS platform offering 3D design capabilities in 2019 after creating sister company Hatch, which offers digital showrooming and wholesaling. PVH acted as a strategic investor for the startups, which were created within PVH but operated separately. In October 2022, Stitch 3D and Hatch consolidated to form Stitch. Now, the two segments are dividing again: Fashion Cloud is only acquiring the digital showroom part of the business, with the 3D design part of the business (which is called Stitch Hub) reintegrating into PVH Europe.
Fashion Cloud is a B2B tech platform that connects over 700 brands with 20,000 retailers, streamlining the wholesale buying process with data insights. It raised €25 million in its Series B funding round last year. With the acquisition, Fashion Cloud will use Stitch’s digital showroom technology to streamline the order process. The digital showroom technology will allow retailers to pre-order or reorder items that a salesperson has shown them digitally, as well as offering a self-service option. Fashion Cloud’s data insights allow brands and retailers to understand the optimum order quantities and the quantities of each size to order.
“PVH has succeeded in developing a digital showroom that really revolutionised the way of selling in the showroom, which [in the past has been] process of lots of physical samples,” says Alies ter Kuile, co-founder of Fashion Cloud. “What PVH developed for themselves is a much more interactive, digital and immersive way of doing these appointments; it gives the brands more control.”
Digital showrooms, including Stitch and Joor, have risen in popularity in the past three years. What drew Fashion Cloud to Stitch specifically is that it is “by far the most immersive and fashionable solution”, according to Ter Kuile. “In a [digital showroom] session, it needs to be creative and appealing; it can’t be too techy and nerdy with too many buttons. We looked at a lot of platforms that were more like line sheets, where you put in some numbers and then you get a picture — with a digital showroom, it’s the other way round: the brand story is first, and then you look at the numbers.”
PVH’s Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein will remain Stitch’s clients following the acquisition, as will other existing clients such as North Face. Stitch’s full team, including many of the original contributors to the digital showroom at Tommy Hilfiger, will be integrated into Fashion Cloud.
For PVH, the announcement comes as the company continues to focus on its core brands, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, as part of the PVH+ plan. On Monday, the company announced it sold three intimates brands, Warners, Olga and True Co., to Basic Resources for $160 million.
“The acquisition is a natural next step for a startup that aims to fulfil its potential as an industry-changing tool,” said Martijn Hagman, CEO of Tommy Hilfiger Global and PVH Europe, in a statement. “It represents the culmination of an incubating project that originated within our premises but was destined to reach wider spaces.”
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