Navigating Supply Chain Challenges: CEO Strategies for Resilient Fashion Retail

Volatile demand, geopolitical instability, rising costs, sustainability pressures and increasingly demanding consumers have combined to make resilience a strategic imperative. At the same time, fashion retailers across sectors, from footwear and sportswear to beauty, jewellery and specialty foods, are expanding internationally and operating across more channels than ever before.

The question facing leadership teams is no longer whether to transform, but how to build a supply chain and retail operation that can flex, adapt and perform at scale without compromising customer experience or margin. This is where unified commerce, underpinned by AI, becomes a board-level priority.

From Fragmentation to Visibility – Why Unified Commerce Matters

One of the biggest challenges fashion CEOs face today is fragmentation. Disconnected systems for inventory, stores, eCommerce, supply chain and customer data create blind spots that undermine decision-making.

When leaders lack real-time visibility across stock, demand and customer behaviour, resilience becomes reactive rather than strategic. Excess stock builds in one location while another channel faces stockouts. Promotions are planned without understanding supply constraints. Store teams are left firefighting instead of serving customers.

A unified commerce platform changes this dynamic. By bringing inventory, transactions, customer data and store execution into a single, cloud-based environment, CEOs gain a real-time view of the business, across countries, channels and brands. AI then turns that visibility into foresight, enabling better forecasting, smarter replenishment and faster response to disruption.

AI-Powered Inventory: Turning Resilience into Revenue

In fashion retail, inventory is both the biggest cost and the biggest opportunity. Smarter, AI-powered inventory management allows retailers to move beyond static planning models and embrace dynamic decision-making. By analysing historical sales, local demand patterns, seasonality and external factors, AI can optimise stock levels by store and channel and so reduce markdowns, preventing stockouts and increasing sales per square metre.

This approach has been central to the omnichannel strategy of Oberalp Group, the international house of mountain sports brands including Salewa, Dynafit and LaMunt. As Oberalp expanded to 94 stores across nine European countries, maintaining availability while controlling complexity became critical. By adopting Cegid Retail as a unified commerce backbone, the group transformed inventory into a strategic asset. Automated replenishment and Min-Max stock levels helped ensure bestsellers were always available, while integrated warehouse and store operations simplified planning and improved profitability.

Supply Chain Resilience Starts in the Store

While supply chain discussions often focus on upstream logistics, resilience is ultimately tested at the store level.

Fashion store teams today are expected to manage inventory, fulfil omnichannel orders, apply promotions, handle returns, comply with brand standards and deliver personalised service — all under intense cost pressure. When store execution breaks down, even the most sophisticated supply chain strategy fails.

This is where AI-enabled retail operations play a critical role. Superdry’s global rollout of Cegid Retail Store Excellence demonstrates how operational clarity strengthens resilience. By replacing legacy systems with an intuitive, scalable platform, Superdry created a single source of truth for retail communication, task management and compliance across regions.

Automated task distribution, real-time tracking and digital audit trails have significantly reduced administrative burden, allowing store teams to focus on customers rather than complexity. For leadership teams navigating rising labour costs and operational pressure, this ability to “do more with less” is fundamental to long-term resilience.

Customer-Centricity as a Resilience Strategy

In fashion retail, resilience is both operational and emotional. Consumers expect seamless, personalised experiences across channels, even during periods of disruption. They want staff to recognise them, understand their preferences and offer relevant service whether they shop in-store, online or via mobile.

Cegid Retail enables store associates to instantly access customer information, empowering more meaningful interactions and consistent omnichannel experiences. This human-centric approach is especially critical in sectors such as beauty, sportswear and jewellery, where advice and expertise directly influence conversion and loyalty.

Oberalp’s experience reinforces this point. More than 50% of the group’s revenue now comes from registered customers, who consistently outperform unregistered shoppers across key KPIs. Unified customer data, supported by robust loyalty capabilities, allows the brand to build deeper relationships while maintaining operational control.

Resilience as a Competitive Advantage

In an era of permanent disruption, resilience has become a defining characteristic of successful fashion retailers.

By unifying commerce, optimising inventory with AI and empowering store teams with intelligent tools, CEOs can turn supply chain challenges into a source of competitive advantage. Cegid Retail supports this transformation, not as a collection of disconnected solutions, but as a global, secure, AI-powered platform designed for the realities of modern fashion retail.