Three retailers on customer experience

Last week’s MagentoLive 2019 expo in Sydney saw several retailers sharing their experiences and insights into how they remain competitive in a difficult economy. During one breakout session on optimising the customer experience, three fashion retailers explained how they use e-commerce and online marketing, as well as creative design in bricks-and-mortar stores, to succeed.

Here are some highlights from the conversation between Australian businesses Retail Apparel Group and St. Frock and the Singapore-based brand Love, Bonito.

Retail Apparel Group: Knowledge is everything

Operating six fashion and accessories brands and 500 bricks-and-mortar stores across Australia and New Zealand, Retail Apparel Group has learned the importance of tailoring its communications to each brand’s target audience.

“What we try to do, at a group level, is concentrate on the customer journey,” Retail Apparel Group head of digital and technology Peter Ratcliffe said at the event.

“We try to cross that seamless journey across all channels, and we utilise the stores to enhance the experience.”

The group handles its menswear brands – Tarocash, yd., Connor and Johnny Bigg – differently than its womenswear brand, Rockwell, or its jewellery brand, American Swiss.

“Social is quite easy for our womenswear brand – women do a lot more on Facebook, and shopping, and so on,” Ratcliffe said.

“But for men it was hard, but it’s more about having a conversation and engaging them, rather than trying to sell them something. A funny post here and there, and just getting that banter going [works for us] from a menswear point of view.”

The group also sends emails early in the day to its Rockwell database, which doesn’t work for its menswear roster.

“There’s lots of different things that you need to understand [about] your customer; their lifestyle, what they do, and then once you’ve done that you can go ahead and start your [customer experience] journey,” Ratcliffe explained.

Even though Retail Apparel Group serves multiple audiences, the most important factor when considering how to engage with those audiences, according to Ratcliffe, is understanding what they want and how the brand can give it to them.

Love, Bonito: Deliver what the audience needs

As Singapore’s largest home grown women’s fashion label, Love, Bonito has gathered an audience of loyal and invested customers, many of whom have been shopping with the brand since its debut in 2010.

“I think that at the crux of it, we try our very, very best to be a thoughtful brand,” Charmaine Chua, head of product at Love, Bonito, said at the event.

“When we opened our first flagship store, we really thought about the way women shop. Sometimes, women like to shop in groups, they like to try on clothes and show each other what they’re trying on.

“So, we created these modular fitting rooms that you can break down doors and actually turn them into huge rooms where women can try bridesmaid clothing on together, or just random clothing, and show each other.”

By taking customer needs and wants into account when deciding the direction of the brand, Love, Bonito has been able to keep a strong line of communication open between its customers and staff.

This has enabled feedback from customers to directly influence design decisions, such as Love, Bonito’s move to include pockets in as many of its products as it can. Customers told the brand this was an issue, and it altered the design of products moving forward to give them what they want.

“Our customers are very invested in us, so as a result a lot of them send in feature recommendations,” Chua told IRW after the presentation.

“They send in ‘why don’t you think about this, or what about this’, and all of these ideas go into a massive backlog that we look at and then prioritise and can bring that to life.”

This open channel also led to the creation of the ‘Style Ambassador’ program, where each store has several employees on staff to help customers find items that fit, suit their personal style and make them happy.

Many of the changes Love, Bonito has made are not based on the newest technology or the hottest trend, but rather they are based on understanding its particular audience – young Asian women – and what they want and need.

St. Frock: The customer isn’t always right

Sandradee Makejev built her fashion brand St. Frock from a Bondi Beach market stall to a $15 million e-commerce business through customer engagement, largely through a focus on social media.

Makejev started selling online when a Sydney-based dust storm in 2009 made it impossible to reach customers at the market, and while it took some time to build a following, it has ultimately pushed the brand on to bigger and better things.

“A big part [of that] is always listening to our customers, so [finding out] what works, and what doesn’t work; what doesn’t work we quickly move on from, and what works [we ask] how do we keep driving that?” Makejev said at the event last week.

St. Frock primarily uses social media to interact with its audience and learn from them. Makejev said Facebook is the brand’s biggest platform and the one she most believes in “because that’s where most people are”.

But while Makejev – like Ratcliffe and Chua – believes it’s important to listen to the customer, she said retailers don’t always need to do what they say. For instance, St. Frock’s customers are vocal about their desire for bricks-and-mortar stores, but that isn’t something Makejev is interested in.

“Whenever I thought about St. Frock, I never through about opening more retail stores. I did entertain the idea of doing pop-ups, and that kind of stuff, and customers would hassle us and ask us to open a store in Perth, which was a big request we’d get all the time,” Makejev said.

“[But], I just couldn’t see that as the future…when my lease was up for renewal, I thought it was time to say goodbye and really focus on my online strategy. I wanted to drive that.”

The choice was seemingly the correct one for St. Frock, since Makejev has been able to grow the self-funded business to the point where she is currently looking at expansion opportunities in the US.

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