“Retail Express has simply transformed our business. It provides the features and real-time data visibility we’ve been missing. It integrates with all our other key business systems to unlock massive process efficiency gains and game changing omni-channel capabilities.
But beyond that, the way they managed the implementation for us and got us live in 4 months was phenomenal."
– Sarah Foley, Ecommerce And Digital Marketing Manager - IFB
Return on Investment Summary
Within 4 months, IFB were live with Retail Express and have since been able to:
Eliminate 1 day of data admin per week
Double their eCommerce conversion rates
Integrate their in-store, eCommerce and marketplaces operations
Improve visibility & control over their David Jones concession stores
Ship from store and leverage their entire in-store inventory online
An omni-channel fashion leader
International Fashion Brands (IFB) is one of Australia’s leading luxury fashion houses featuring prestigious brands such as Maje, Claudie Pierlot and Sandro Paris that represent the pinnacle of Parisian chic. With over 32 owned and concession stores, multiple flourishing eCommerce sites and a major presence on The Iconic and David Jones Online, the business is truly maximising its omni-channel reach.
However, this multi-brand, omni-channel approach means much more business complexity to manage.
In order to regain visibility and control over its complex business operations, IFB realised they needed to adopt best-of-breed cloud software that could unify all their data and processes across all their sales channels.
Siloed on-premise systems created inefficiencies & lost sales
Before Retail Express, IFB were using several disparate and siloed systems including an on-premise ERP, PIM, BigCommerce and Tigers 3PL.
- Their ERP was an on-premise solution and therefore was expensive to maintain, difficult to adapt to changing retail needs, and suffered from data polling issues, meaning inventory and sales orders were constantly out of date.
- The ERP did not integrate well with the PIM software used to manage their operations on The Iconic and David Jones online, meaning data had to be entered twice and often was inconsistent.
- IFB’s BigCommerce eCommerce stores were not integrated with their PIM software, meaning they could not manage their in-store and online inventory and business processes in a unified way.
This presented many limitations for ensuring process efficiency, informed decision making and meeting customer expectations around the omni-channel shopping experience.
A unified solution with Retail Express
By adopting Retail Express, all IFBs owned stores are now operating from a unified cloud POS platform with live data visibility across the entire business. No more polling issues or out of date information. Employees in any store can see inventory across all stores and the entire supply chain, all in real-time.
The Retail Express integration with BigCommerce means that all stores inventory can be leveraged online, plus a wide range of game changing omni-channel practices processes have been unlocked. And the integration with The Iconic and David Jones Online marketplaces, powered by Crossfire, means that data and fulfilment processes can be centrally managed in Retail Express, without any double-handling.
In addition to this, Retail Express directly integrates with Tigers 3PL and Shippit to even further enhance process and data management efficiencies.
“Retail Express has simply transformed our business. It provides the features and real-time data visibility we’ve been missing. It integrates with all our other key business systems to unlock massive process efficiency gains and game changing omni-channel capabilities.
But beyond that, the way they managed the implementation for us is phenomenal. They had dedicated people in their team helping us every step of the way, ensuring that we got up and running quickly and smoothly.”
– Sarah Foley, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing Manager - IFB
Rapid low risk implementation
Due to the Retail Express cloud technology stack and implementation methodology, IFB were able to migrate off their old complex systems and ‘Go Live’ within 4 months.
The speed and success of this implementation enabled IFB to significantly reduce risk, and quickly pivot and adapt to the changing retail demands within a fraction of the time it would take with older on-premise systems.
“Retail Express were able to migrate us to their platform within 4 months and setup integrations with our BigCommerce sites, The Iconic, David Jones Online and David Jones concessions. They’ve set the benchmark for new software implementation service in my view.”
– Sarah Foley, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing Manager - IFB
Eliminating 1 day of data admin per week & optimising marketplace management
With their old siloed systems, IFB had to re-enter data from their ERP into their PIM which was used to manage their product data in The Iconic and David Jones Online marketplaces.
With Retail Express, this data entry admin requirement is eliminated. Product, inventory and order data is automatically synced between Retail Express and these marketplaces.
Fulfilment of marketplace orders can then be managed in a more streamlined and sophisticated way within Retail Express including direct integration to Tigers 3PL platform and Shippit.
“With Retail Express, we’ve managed to eliminate the equivalent of a full day per week of data admin. This means our employees can focus on value-adding and sales generating activities so we get a much better return on our investment in labour. We’re also able to better manage our fulfilment of marketplace orders meaning we’re able to meet our SLAs and offer a better customer experience.”
– Sarah Foley, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing Manager - IFB
Doubling Ecommerce conversion rates & adapting to lockdowns
The integration between Retail Express and BigCommerce means that IFB are able to unify their in-store and online operations. By leveraging all their store inventory online and showing live stock levels, customers have a wider range of product and sizing options, and there is more likelihood of stock availability to win the sale.
The BigCommerce integration has also enabled IFB to adopt a ship from store strategy, fulfilling web orders from store locations nearer to the customer – a capability that has proven to be business-critical throughout the Covid lockdowns.
The combination of being able to leverage stock from across all their stores, display live inventory and offer faster fulfilment via Ship from Store has transformed IFB’s eCommerce conversion rates and allowed them to be adaptable in a turbulent environment with the threat of lockdowns always apparent.
“With the advanced omni-channel capabilities of Retail Express we’ve been able to double our eCommerce conversion rates! If we had stayed on our old systems, we would have been stuck in a position where we had stock just sitting in stores unutilised during lockdowns.
eCommerce is a massive sales growth priority for us as a business and with Retail Express we are best positioned to achieve our goals and offer a truly differentiated omni-channel customer experience.”
– Sarah Foley, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing Manager - IFB
Improving visibility and control of David Jones concession stores
With Retail Express, IFB now get full visibility of their inventory and sales performance across all their David Jones concession stores, allowing them to make informed decisions to improve sales, avoid overstocking and improve the product and size selection for their customers.
“Retail Express allows us to finally get some visibility and control over our David Jones concession stores and do this efficiently via digital integration to the David Jones POS system. Before Retail Express, all our processes were manual and data was not up-to-date. Retail Express has allowed us to make major improvements to our concessions operations both in terms of efficiency and sales.”
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