As summer approaches, apparel companies have to ditch traditional practices when preparing new products. Typically, summer is the season for planning summer-themed marketing campaigns such as travel and vacations, and brands take advantage of the summer craze to whet the appetite for products like new swimsuits or tote bags.

However, due to the impact of the epidemic, the planning of brand new products and marketing activities needs to be reconsidered. Because consumers are expected to go out less this summer. In order to adapt to the changes, many clothing brands have emphasized their products as a must-have for leisure at home when promoting their new products this summer, and started to introduce comfortable and sophisticated clothing that will be worn in the home office.

For the most part, it's too late for the company to completely abandon the clothing they're planning to launch in the summer. Larger companies may choose to hold inventory until next summer. But that doesn't make sense for seasonally higher stocks like shorts and swimsuits. Instead, companies must figure out how to make sense of existing inventory.

Brands need to be on the same cadence as customers, be able to sell new products, but customers won’t feel like you’re capitalizing on latent demand they might have to shop. Not everyone can afford discretionary spending right now. "

Melanie Travis, founder of swimwear brand Andie, said: "In non-pandemic times, we tend to do a lot of summer travel-related marketing, such as our product promotion as 'this is the best swimsuit of all time' (this is the Best swimsuit), but at the moment we have to adjust."

Andie recently launched a new collection of eco-friendly swimwear, which was already in the works before the outbreak.

While Andie might normally be on a beach in the Bahamas or Mexico for product photos with models, the company decided to use employees as models to promote the new collection, though Andie can still hire models and manage photo shoots remotely. Melanie Travis said that she felt that it was pointless to use professional models, because many consumers now buy clothes without adoring models, but some real faces are closer to life.

Like Andie, other digitally-native apparel startups are scaling back their summer marketing campaigns. Men's t-shirt brand Cuts had to wait until May to start taking pictures for its summer collection, which was due to launch in April. Its founder Borrelli said: "We must shift the focus of our summer 2020 campaign from travel and travel to a stay-at-home environment."

The company had been considering a line of polo shirts ahead of the coronavirus outbreak. Borrelli said the pandemic cemented its decision to continue production, as the company bet the collection would be popular among men still working from home during the summer. Borrelli says the polo shirts look professional, but are still more casual than the shirts some office workers wear.

Another option for digital apparel companies that want to sell merchandise more suitable for the stay-at-home crowd is to form partnerships with other companies. Andie, for example, buys wholesale from other women-founded companies, including Supergoop, Case & Drift, and Brunna Co., to test out its “summer kit,” where customers can buy towels, sunscreen and more from its website.

For apparel retailers with brick-and-mortar stores, the question of what to launch is even more complicated, as they also have to figure out how much inventory is in store and online. They may have been stocking up on their inventory for two months, and most retailers want to clear their inventory first and launch some new products to attract customers. Target, for example, recently released a new limited-edition line of designer clothing that the company decided to release online rather than in stores to encourage people to go out less. Target has delayed the release of the series by two months in response to the coronavirus, CMO Jill Sando said in an interview.