LINC+ Project Group Launches Living Lab to Overcome Clothing Store Crisis
Completed VM Improvement at 3 Fashion Stores in Busan with 'Smart Retail V1.0'
[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] How can universities help small business owners in the fashion industry?
The LINC+ Project Group at Dongseo University (President Jang Je-guk) has jumped into finding solutions for small fashion business owners in the Busan area struggling due to COVID-19 through a living laboratory called the ‘Living Lab’.
They named the project ‘Smart Retail V1.0’. As the online transition accelerates across all industries including apparel and fashion, professors, students, and industry experts joined forces to ensure the survival and innovation of offline stores.
Under the leadership of Professor Kim Hyung-sook from the Department of Design, fashion design students participated in all stages including selecting target stores, field surveys and interviews, draft work, prop production, and setting up. On the 1st, they finally completed the VM (Visual Merchandising) improvement work for three stores in the Busan area.
VM stands for visual merchandising, which means a visual product strategy. It is a means to concretize and express the image and concept that a company, brand, or store aims for to customers.
Currently, distribution is rapidly changing with advanced information technology (IT), but local fashion small business owners are struggling, not knowing how to cope with these changes.
Dongseo University took the initiative to analyze the current status of local fashion small business owners’ stores and focused on revitalizing the struggling small business owners by improving the VM of fashion stores in the Busan area.
The manager of one of the stores in Hadan, which improved VM through this project, said, “Due to COVID-19, customer visits have decreased and sales have dropped significantly, so we were discouraged. But with Dongseo University’s help, we changed the store layout and reorganized it, regaining vitality. Hearing from regular customers that the store looks prettier and the products look better gives us the determination to work hard again to boost sales.”
Starting with this ‘Smart Retail V1.0’ project to improve VM in local fashion stores, Dongseo University plans to continue transforming local stores over multiple years through annual version upgrades, linking online and offline stores, introducing various retail digital technologies, and utilizing AI, VR/AR, IoT, and big data.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
