Click & reserve for fashion retail and try-before-you-buy journeys

Project overview

The retailer wanted to support a customer journey in which products are reserved online, picked in store and presented for fitting before final purchase. This is not the same as a standard paid click-and-collect model. Instead, it is a store-centered reservation and handover scenario that depends on efficient picking, disciplined customer handover and a smooth transition into final POS purchase.

Business challenges

• Reserved items were not always easy for store teams to identify and prepare consistently.
• Customer arrival and fitting created a different execution pattern than standard order fulfillment.
• Store teams needed simple tools for picking requests and order handover.
• The process had to preserve customer convenience without overcomplicating store operations.

SAP Retail solution design

• Structured the scenario as click & reserve with store pickup preparation.
• Used automatic picking request generation to trigger store execution after the reservation was created.
• Supported store handover through retail-specific Store Operations apps such as Process Picking Requests and Hand Over Orders.
• Kept the final purchase flexible by allowing the customer to decide in store what to buy after fitting.

Expected business impact

• Improved customer experience for fashion reservation journeys.
• Created better internal control over reserved-item preparation and handover.
• Reduced the operational friction between e-commerce activity and store execution.
• Supported omnichannel growth without forcing a one-size-fits-all fulfillment pattern.

Recommended next steps

A future phase could include pickup slot logic, partial reservation handling and analytics on reservation abandonment.