Trade

The industry

For years, the trading industry has been turned upside down by fundamental changes – with no end in sight for a long time. First and foremost, digitalisation has revolutionised trade – the internet and the new technologies allow customers to look for, compare and buy products in any place, at any time. Moreover, the lines between online and offline trade become ever more blurred. And consumers buy online more and more. Meanwhile this is also true for the food retailing business which has been regarded an unchallenged domain of brick-and-mortar shops for a long time. Free door delivery is in vogue again. In addition to digitalisation, the German market is exposed also to the high price pressure from discounters and the competitive pressure from international suppliers that edge into the German market. This has caused declines in sales primarily in the medium price segment and led to continuing cut-throat competition.

In recent years, this had a particularly severe effect on retail industries, such as do-it-yourself stores, food retailers and the fashion industry. The latter hit the headlines with news of crises and numerous insolvencies.

hww industry expertise
 

In recent years, hww has supported a large number of companies from the trading industry, including the fashion industry. We present an overview of our know-how of the fashion industry in our newsletter hww kompakt (only in German). Download this issue here.

Selected references

A selection of our clients can be found here.