BIO: Rebecca Hard Rebecca Hard has been general manager of Sussan for three years, prior to which she worked as the brand’s national retail operations manager. In total, Rebecca has worked in the Sussan Group for more than 15 years, serving in senior roles at Sportsgirl until 2008. Company Profile: Sussan Group The Sussan Group is an Australian women’s fashion retailer comprising three retail brands – Sportsgirl, Sussan and Suzanne Grae. Sussan maintains 183 stores across Australia and ope
rates an international e-commerce platform.
Inside Retail: Sussan’s e-commerce presence is now well into its fifth year of operation, how much has your online operation grown over the last few years?
Rebecca Hard: It’s been highly successful for us. Our customers are really engaged with our digital platform, our website has performed really well we think it fits in extremely well in relation to our core customer, who is obviously very busy. We’ve got 183 stores around the country so she has a really good understanding of the fit and the quality of our product we offer. So with the website over the last five years its been growing really steadily because we feel it just fits in really nicely to the way our customer likes to shop. Consistently over the past five years we’ve had at least 20 per cent growth year on year and some years that’s obviously been higher as well. But very much consistently we’ve had that growth over the past 5 years, year on year.
IR: For a lot of retailers, click and collect has been a logistical challenge. How does Sussan approach their click and collect service.
RH: We’ve done things as simply as we possibly can because there are lots of different options. We’re lucky because we have 183 stores from a bricks and mortar point of view so that’s certainly helped us. We have free shipping on our website currently for all customers and that includes free returns. So we just thought it was a really nice additional level of service we could offer our customers. The customer can go online and select to have it sent either to her home or sent to one of our stores, we actually use exactly the same delivery process that we use for sending products to our customers home, its just that she chooses a different delivery address. Then obviously it’s available in store for the customer to come and pick up at her convenience. We certainly find for some of those rural and busy areas it just enables the customer to know that she’ll be able to come and pick it up from a store that’s nearby at a time that’s really convenient for her. She doesn’t need to worry about being home to sign for a garment.
IR: Your offer click and collect as a complimentary service, a lot of retailers have found that difficult to justify, what was your thought process in offering it for free?
RH: It flows on from the service that we offer in relation to free deliveries with all purchases from our website. Whether it goes to someone’s home or the store it’s actually the same service. Because our customer is highly engaged we have a really loyal customer base. Our customer is really engaged with the business and because she’s used to the quality and the fit of our product, she knows she can actually come in and shop in store or shop online. We’ve just found that the take-up with our website has been really good so our average transaction value is certainly really strong online, as it is in store, and its just been something we’ve been able to enable for our customer. Obviously it is a service for her, but we’ve certainly found that its still been highly profitable so the sales that we do generate from our website have more than covered the cost of the deliveries for us. It’s something that our customer has really responded well to and she very much shops across all of our channels and the other fantastic thing that’s been really good for us as well has actually been our store team. They’re highly engaged with our website so if we don’t have a product in store or the store team is sold out they are very happy to get the customer to go online and actually look at that product and really try and facilitate that for the customer. It really enables our customer to shop whenever wherever she wants at any time. It’s certainly been a key reason why we thought free delivery was really important.
IR: Specialty Fashion Group is looking at offering cross-brand click and collect. Is the idea that customers could order from Sussan’s online store and pick up at Sportsgirl something you’ve contemplated?
RH: It’s something we haven’t pursued as yet click and collect for us is still very new. We went live with the Sussans brand as the first brand to go live with click and collect before rolling that out since then to sports girl and Sussan grey. There’s definitely been conversations at initial phases of how maybe the different stores could actually support each other in relation to that process, but at this stage its not something we’ve actually explored as yet. But I wouldn’t say no, it’s certainly an option we could have down the track.
IR: Sussan offers international shipping from Australia, which isn’t offered by the bulk of Australian retailers. How much of your business are you doing to international customers?
RH: It’s been great for us. We used to actually have a bricks and mortar presence in NZ which we did close a number of years ago, and that shipping has enabled our customers to stay really in touch with the brand and obviously we had a number of very loyal VIP customers over there as well. They can still shop and get all of their VIP benefits online, which has been fantastic for us. There’s a lot of people who actually have children or parents that are actually living overseas or travelling overseas so we find our online store is fantastic for sending gifts overseas and also there might be people who have actually lived in Australia for a very long time, and then they might move back home. It might also be Australians living overseas that really want to stay connected with the brand. It’s been really good for us and we do have some key countries that we actually ship a lot of product to, but in saying that its actually quiet spread as well. There’s some very unusual countries that we see orders go to. That’s interesting, but that gift giving opportunity is certainly something that people buy into very well.
IR: Sussan has maintained a loyalty program for more than 15 years. What stands out about your VIP offering and makes it sustainable?
RH: It’s well established in the business, its been here for well over 15 years, when I took over the role of general manager three years ago we needed to get a good understanding of it. Because it was started so long ago its been something that’s just grown and grown within the business, but we’ve never truly understood the cost and benefit of that program so in the last 12 months we’ve conducted a really good research piece into understanding what that program is worth to us. We’ve just found that it’s really something our customer loves. Our customer, our VIP customer, is highly engaged; she’s very loyal and shops a number of times with us. It’s a very large database and we can have on average 64 per cent of our sales in a week coming from a VIP base. Some weeks it will be lower, others it will be much higher and of course it varies store by store. In some rural locations we’ve got stores that have a VIP base up into the 80 per cents. So its been really great for us and having done that cost benefit analysis piece in the last 12 months we’ve really decided we can actually start to further invest in this program and actually continue to drive that program for us really effectively through our stores and now also through our e-commerce site as well.
IR: The female retail apparel space is constantly changing. How does Sussan stay relevant as a brand that’s been around for such a long time?
RH: We talk a lot about our customer in our office. It’s really key and the Australian consumer is a very savvy consumer. We’ve had a lot of the international retailers coming in, which I thinks actually been fantastic for the market, its actually been really good for us in a lot of locations to have some of those international players come into the mix. It’s just really keeping us challenged and kept us talking about what our customer wants and I think if you know what your customer is looking for and you react as quickly as you can to the different types of garments that she wants and the different types of things she’s doing within her life, then you will always stay really relevant to her. But she does change very regularly so it is important to talk about it all the time. We do a lot of store visits, were out talking to our store teams continually and we look at products every week to make sure we understand what’s selling, what’s not and why do we think that is. Getting feedback from our store teams and our customers is key to that process. As an Australian brand that has been around for a long time we also have a real opportunity to understand the climatic differences here compared to the international guys. That’s something we really work very hard on. That understanding of what Queensland needs from a fabrication point of view versus Victoria versus Sydney. There’s really different individual styles across all of those states from a lifestyle point of view and we really try and tap into those as well, that’s really important for us. The other thing that’s been really key for us is that fundamentally as an exec team we’re actually our customers, so if its garments that we can wear and we can actually enjoy within our lifestyle then we know our customer is going to like those. I think that’s a real point of difference for us as well. We are all women designing for women so we really get what she’s doing, we get children’s drop off at night, going to work, footy pick ups on the weekend, going out for a social event, we understand all of that because we live that lifestyle.
IR: Sussan has 183 stores nation wide, how many more can the local market accommodate?
RH: That’s a hard question. We’re in a lot of locations but there are still some really good opportunities for us, particularly in Sydney. We’ve got at least two new stores opening before the end of the year which we’re really excited about. There’s also a new store opening around about March next year and there’s a lot of stores we’ve got on the list. We’ve been very actively looking at very different areas for us. In particular where population growth is expanding, rural areas are always really good for us as well although we are in most country towns. There’s a couple on our list we’d like to look at though. Two years ago we actually started an apparel only concept, sleepwear is something were very well known for, as it is the heritage of our brand. But we really felt our apparel had moved to a really good place from a fashion point of view and we felt it was really time to showcase our apparel. So we actually have four apparel only concepts and they’ve actually traded very well for us. It’s just something different for us to actually showcase and talk very confidently about how great our fashion is.
IR: Sussan now offers an instore styling experience. Is that part of a wider focus to keep people coming into bricks and mortar stores?
RH: For us, bricks and mortar will always be really key for us, e-tail is probably going to sit between seven to 10 per cent for us because our stores are still growing really successfully in terms of like for like growth. It comes back to what is that customer at Sussan looking for from us. She’s time-poor and she very much wants very quick style advice. We’ve always had a really committed in-store team that loves helping customers, but we’ve also put everyone through body shape training in the last 12 months, so they actually understand a customers body shape and what garments will actually work best for that customer. That’s really sped up the service process for our customers, which I think she’s really appreciated. Then we’ve also done styling training as well in the last 6 months so every member of our team has had styling training. Its all about offering that extra level of service for our customer and trying to actually help her walk out more quickly, but in essence feeling really confident abut how she looks because at the end of the day we want our customers to look great feel fabulous. You want clothing to facilitate everything else you do in life and you don’t want to have to spend a lot of time worrying about it. I think its really been driven very much from a focus on our customers. Because we get out to stores so much and talk to our team and customers directly. We’ve added a few styling suites into our stores which have worked really well and people can book times to go into those or just turn up. We will also be rolling out a smaller version of the styling suite in all stores because its a real opportunity for the customer to have a really nice experience and try things on and work out what does work well for her.