Laetitia, Director of the Okaïdi Girls market, explains how the crisis has forced us to take risks but is also speeding up change in the company.
She says,
“Closing all our Okaïdi stores – online and off – means we have to do something with all the stock that doesn’t get sold over the coming seasons. We will have to modify the seasonality of our collections. We had already been considering how to keep our summer themes for longer through the back-to-school season with a range of short-sleeved tops, dresses and Bermuda shorts. Now, we’ll be doing it faster and on a more massive scale than we would have otherwise: normally, we would likely have rolled out the change over two or three summers to minimise the risk!
The same goes for our mid-season “Happy” sales: we’re going to push them back a little to coincide with children’s rhythms and our product seasonality. This will also help our partners in the southern hemisphere with a collection that is more aligned with their “climate” needs.
Similarly, to avoid increasing the number of DHL shipments from approving the collections in winter, we are giving our Asian office more autonomy. We’ll still be available if necessary for approval by photo. We’re able to do this because our patternmakers, especially in China, know our standards well now. This will result in one-fifth the DHL exchanges! And we plan to speed up the general rollout of this process.
In the end, I’m sure that it will help us move forward even faster!”
