Up Close with Simon P. Lock, Co-Founder of The ORDRE Group

Simon P Lock, Chairman and CEO of The ORDRE Group, has been a fashion innovator for much of his career. Having founded Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia in 1996, Simon sold the event to International Management Group (IMG) in 2005. He was a Senior Vice-President with IMG for six years before leaving to found The ORDRE Group, a fashion technology firm redefining relationships between luxury brands, retailers, and consumers. 

In 2020, JOOR announced a partnership with The ORDRE Group to integrate the company’s proprietary ORB360° technology into the JOOR wholesale management platform, allowing clients to efficiently capture and upload high quality 360° images and video. Leveraging ORDRE’s sophisticated image-capture technology within JOOR’s industry-leading order management ecosystem has created a powerful digital experience enabling buyers to confidently place orders from anywhere in the world. This partnership has continued to expand with the introduction of JOOR Custom—offering clients a completely bespoke virtual showroom service.

Simon’s extensive experience in fashion and global perspective gives him a deep understanding of the changing needs of the worldwide fashion environment. With a shared vision for improving the wholesale buying and selling process, ORDRE and JOOR are transforming the way fashion brands and retailers do business.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.‍

I’ve been in the fashion industry for a long time. I got my start on the physical side of things, producing fashion shows for brands internationally, and with a company that owned wholesale showrooms. Then I founded Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia in Sydney. When I sold the business to IMG, I made a complete transformation and pivoted to the digital side of the fashion world. That was when I founded The ORDRE Group—offering brands virtual showrooms, ORB360° image capture, and Authentique, our new web3 products.

What drove you to create The ORDRE Group? 

Honestly, it was working and producing so many fashion weeks. In the mid-2000s especially, I recognized how relying on physical fashion shows could limit operations. Not all buyers could travel frequently. We could see the need to create a whole new channel. What we ended up with was the first cloud-based website for virtual showrooms, that allowed for remote orders. Buyers didn’t have to fly anymore.

What excites you most about the partnership between JOOR and The ORDRE Group?

Integrating our innovative 360° imagery and video into the industry’s most intuitive and effective order management platform is a win-win for our clients. It gives buyers a much better understanding of the products they’re looking at. ORB360° is a solution for both brands and retailers using JOOR. The beauty of using such a complete digital system is that the images being produced can be used anywhere along the chain: from B2B to B2C to social media. It’s a one-stop reservoir of digital images that can be used right through the promotional supply chain.

JOOR and ORDRE are both committed to investing in innovation and delivering solutions to address our clients’ needs. It’s exciting that we get to bring new technologies to JOOR’s clients, such as our recently launched JOOR Custom—the best personalized virtual showroom on the market.

Let’s talk about JOOR Custom.

Some buyers are still coming to a physical showroom, but today the majority need to access showrooms remotely. The fashion world has entered a hybrid model of wholesale. JOOR Custom allows brands to build an entire online environment in which to show their collections exactly the way they want – the way it would look when you walked into the store. They can showcase their brand DNA in a single destination where buyers can review new collections each season.

With JOOR Custom, you can offer virtual tours of the physical showroom. ORB360° can make everything visible with high quality images and interactive videos. Plus you can upload curated video content: interviews about fashion, talks with designers – anything you want to share. You can give buyers a unique virtual environment, and let retailers truly experience your brand the way you want them to.

You can also allow access to media and influencers who want to review samples and view the collections, or even create special access for VIP customers and give them the opportunity to place pre-orders at the same time as wholesale buyers. When buyers and media can see collections on the runway, we’ve seen a large increase in pre-sales.

JOOR Custom is a great partnership for us, because it really brings together the strength of each of our organizations to offer something exceptional for our clients.

Get access to JOOR Custom and ORB360° on the world’s premier wholesale management platform. Request a demo today!