DsgnLnk Ltd is a British company headquartered in London, England. They make it easy for commercial buyers and suppliers to connect, collaborate, share ideas, and define trends. It turbo-charges a previously drawn out and inefficient aspect of the sector making for not only easier business, but a more efficient industry.
Founder Will Bren approached my contracting agency, Harding Scott to help launch his MVP. I was solely responsible for the end-to-end product design.
Connecting, tracking, and performing vital actions along the supply chain remains stuck in the past.
Despite certain aspects of the retail fashion industry evolving into modern, digital-first areas, a lot of the sector remains stuck with outdated, in-efficient systems.
The majority of finding suppliers and seeing their offerings is still done through trade shows, which is not in-line with the current fast-paced market.
The increase in consumer demand means clothing retailers are constantly churning out new collections and have a need for more constant contact with their suppliers.
Finding new suppliers shouldn’t have to wait for the next trade show either. Ordering samples and trading trend reports is more of an ongoing conversation than a one-off chat.
Our client had years of industry knowledge and insider access to the C&A design teams, so we sat through several workshops identifying the personas, customer journeys and use cases for the MVP.
We knew we could make it a more collaborative process with suppliers. Our team scoped out and prioritised our feature set.
Why wait for next trade show? Make styles and raw materials immediately available for sampling.
Save collections of fabrics, trims, and styles, and have order them as you're building your collections.
Communication is key, so apart from following each other, we designed a group chat module, allowing two or more people to talk and share ideas and specifics.
The founder had a clear Instagram-inspired vision for his platform, but the first version didn’t quite encompass this. While being inspired by another app’s interface is great, we can’t forget about our own use cases and functionality. So I worked through our user flows to ensure optimal useability.
Using detailed filters and tagging functionality buyers and suppliers can curate styles, fabrics, and trend reports allowing them to place sample orders with a single click.
They are already disrupting the way the supply chain interacts within the industry, bringing a new, modern approach to supply chain management.
As of 2021, the platform launched its second version, being used by C&A teams and in talks with a couple other international retailers and suppliers. The startup is continuing to expand its features and functionality to build on and improve their offering.
Overall, my contribution resulted in the following:
This was an exciting opportunity to bring my fashion design background and industry knowledge to a new digital startup. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for DsgnLnk.
Working with Harding Scott has been an efficient and highly productive process…
Having delivered the platform on cost and in time Harding Scott have taken on a true partnership role in terms of strategising next steps and ideating potential features to add on that could further generate value for my end users.
Shannon Lake
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