As head of digital at Metcash’s Independent Hardware Group (IHG), the $2.1 billion business behind Mitre 10 and Home Hardware, Anna Kismet is a firm believer in using technology to solve unique business problems.

One problem she has been working on since joining IHG in 2022 is how to manage the backend systems and processes for a business, Mitre 10, with over 500 stores that are all individually owned and operated.

“From a technology point of view, you have multiple point-of-sale systems because every member has a POS of their choice,” Kismet told Inside Retail.

“Range is another one. We can inform what the range should be to maximise the sale opportunity, but they can import and sell whatever they want in their store. Pricing is another one. We recommend strongly that certain RRPs are maintained, but again, because they’re independently owned businesses, they can do whatever they want in terms of their sale events and activities.”

As a national brand, Mitre 10 may go to market with a particular message around Boxing Day or Black Friday, but when a customer walks into a store, they have a unique experience with that store.

Online, however, this was not the case until recently.

Next-level personalisation

“When I joined about two and a half years ago, we had a national website, and it was very much one national website with the same range, the same content, the same promotional cadence for customers in Melbourne and customers in Perth,” Kismet explained.

It’s not just that seasonality was a problem, but more importantly, she said, customers weren’t seeing their local hardware stores represented online.

So Kismet came up with a strategy called ‘MyStore’ to personalise Mitre 10’s website for each hardware store in the network. While personalisation is nothing new in e-commerce, this initiative takes the concept to the next level.

“It’s not just about you as a customer and your purchasing history, it’s your location. The website has to mirror the experience of what you get in your store,” she explained.

“When a customer comes onto the website and they are located near a store that is famous for its garden centre, we need to shout about the garden centre on the homepage.”

Power to the peope

In February last year, Mitre 10 rolled out a platform called Contentful that enables members to create and publish their own content and syndicate it to their homepage. For instance, a Mitre 10 store in South Australia that is known for its wood heaters, has created multiple pages for its wood heater range.

According to Kismet, Mitre 10 has seen “quite a significant uptake” among members. Since launching as a pilot in February, the initiative is now in growth mode, and over the last three months, about 12 to 15 members have been joining the platform every month.

“That is step one,” she said. “The second and the third [steps] are regional pricing and regional range. That’s what we’re working on and hoping to achieve this by the end of this year. These are the building blocks of personalisation.”

Solving unique problems

Another unique problem Kismet has solved is how to show Mitre 10’s inventory online when each location stocks different products.

For example, about 120 Mitre 10 stores are authorised Stihl dealers, but until recently, customers couldn’t find any Stihl products on Mitre 10’s website. Now, it’s possible for members to list products that can only be purchased in particular stores.

“It’s a technology solution, but it solves a very real problem for the business,” Kismet said. “Because if you’ve heard that Stihl is being sold at Mitre 10, what do you do? You go onto the website, you search Stihl, and if you don’t find anything, it actually puts a barrier up for a customer to walk into our physical store.”

She acknowledged that showing inventory online is nothing to write home about in the world of e-commerce, but said the change has already had a big impact on the foot traffic and conversion rate in stores and translated into an improved NPS score.

“It’s that holistic view of where technology comes in, not for the technology’s sake, but actually to solve uniquely, uniquely Mitre 10 problems,” she said.

This article is part of Inside Retail’s #IRWD365 campaign, in partnership with Airwallex, to shine a spotlight on inspiring women in Australia’s retail industry and drive tangible change towards gender equality.