How Saks is Optimizing the Wholesale Buying Process

Saks, the premier digital platform for luxury fashion, recently announced that it has extended its partnership with Lightspeed Commerce, a one-stop commerce platform for merchants to simplify, scale and create exceptional customer experiences. The platform has helped Saks streamline previously manual processes, slashing time spent on order creation by 50 percent and reducing time spent on purchase orders and item creation by a whopping 90 percent. The adoption of NuORDER by Lightspeed has enabled Saks to modernize how it connects with brands and buyers. This collaboration enables the luxury retailer to digitize its buying and merchandising processes, make data-driven decisions, and accelerate its go-to-market strategy, improving customer experience.

In an exclusive interview with Total Retail, Will Cooper, senior vice president, GMM, women's shoes, handbags, and accessories at Saks, discussed the Lightspeed partnership. 

Will Cooper, Senior Vice President, GMM, Women's Shoes, Handbags, and Accessories, Saks

Total Retail: What challenges was Saks experiencing in its wholesale buying process?
Will Cooper: Prior to NuOrder, our team used Excel-based tools to write orders, which limited our ability  to easily and quickly visualize assortments and dynamically analyze orders. We also needed a tool that could be easily accessed remotely as our team is often traveling for market.

TR: Why is NuOrder by Lightspeed an effective solution for Saks?
WC: NuOrder allowed us to digitize our product assortment process in one tool. The ability to visualize assortments at a location level allowed our team to better assort the right product to Saks.com, each of our store markets and customers. It unlocked the ability to analyze our assortments across multiple brands and orders at the same time, as well as to review trends and key items — all of which helps to ensure we're offering the best presentation of product to our customers. As a web-based tool, multiple teams are able to review assortments simultaneously from anywhere in the world.

TR: Can you please share an example of how Saks is using the tool?
WC: Our buying and planning teams can now view a vendor’s product offer prior to going to market, pull those items into assortment, and create the order collaboratively with our vendor partners.

TR: What are the business benefits that Saks has already or expects to realize from its partnership with Lightspeed?
WC: Our teams have experienced significant time savings in the assortment process with the connectivity to vendors’ product offers and the ability to review assortments in real time. This unlocks time for the team to focus more on the actual assortments rather than manually entering and analyzing data.