Traditionally, the event brought together the leaders of the fashion market on one platform: the founders and managers of clothing, footwear and accessories retail chains, the first persons of manufacturing companies, distributors, designers and fashion industry professionals.

Manufacturers, suppliers and representatives of chains met to discuss the prospects for the development of the legal market of fashionable clothes and shoes, the difficulties of the transition from multichannel to omnichannel, the experience of market leaders in working with their own retail, customer orientation and approach to the buyer, innovative technologies in fashion retail, changes in the consumer market and new principles of the formation of the offer in the clothing market and shoes.

45 speakers presented their reports at the forum, including Florian Jansen (Lamoda), Mikhail Urzhumtsev (Melon Fashion Group), Andrey Pavlov (Zenden), Ksenia Ryasova (Finn Flare), Evgeny Ustinov (Tsvetnoyraquo;) and many others.

At the plenary session, the participants tried to answer the main question of the business forum "how to earn more"? 57% of those who voted answered that they would develop new sales channels and technologies, 24% - invest in attracting customers, 19% - optimize the internal structure and costs.

Answering the question "do you plan to grow your business in 2017", 42% of congress delegates said they hope for growth of 20-30%, 36% of participants noted that they expect growth of no more than 10%, 19% of respondents confidently look to the future and predict growth of 50% and more, and only 3% said that they hope to at least maintain the level of sales volumes in 2016.

According to Mikhail Urzhumtsev, CEO of Melon Fashion Group, over the past 15 years, all major international brands have entered the Russian market. Now the assortment of Russian stores is equivalent to the assortment of European ones, and only the buyer determines the success of a particular brand. The task of business and government is to create common and transparent rules for everyone and monitor their implementation. He added that Melon Fashion Group is actively investing in the regions, as regional markets show high profit figures due to the same pricing policy, but low expenditure. He noted that while there is a personnel and technological shortage in the light industry, manufacturers will choose markets with a well-established infrastructure for the production of their products.
With the development of online commerce, not only global, but also small brands have become available anywhere in Russia. This happened, among other things, thanks to platforms such as Lamoda, said Florian Jansen, managing director of the company. Such brands do not have the opportunity to be physically present in all regions of the country, so they actively use online resources, and this trend will continue in the next 10 years. Lamoda is actively developing in the regions and currently operates in 160 cities. According to Jansen, the company's growth will take place precisely at the expense of the regions, since the possibility of choice is important for buyers, and online stores can now offer a larger assortment than regular stores.
 

According to Andrey Pavlov, president of Zenden, the Russian clothing and footwear market is overheated and people do not lack a choice of goods. He noted the importance of the active participation of the state and the dialogue between business and government to solve the problems of the industry.

The Fashion Retail Forum is rightfully the only business platform in Russia for top officials and fashion business professionals, said Anna Shmakova, the producer of the Fashion Retail forum. - More than 200 major retailers and manufacturers of the fashion industry come to the event every year. The task of this year's forum was not only to gather the most successful top managers, but also to talk to them as honestly and openly as possible about the problems and difficulties they face in the process of business growth. Despite the fact that the target audience of the event is managers and business owners, whose main mission is to form a company's development strategy, the issues of non-material motivation of personnel, transition to an omnichannel sales model, proper assortment planning, restructuring of forecasting systems, creation and production of goods were on the agenda. Those managers who came to the forum understand that today the decision-maker must be integrated into all internal processes of companies, even if many functions are transferred to other levels of management.

Next year the forum will be held on December 7-8. The organizer of the forum will again be the company BBCG.