Introduction
Concrete is a renowned Fashion Brand for Men & Kids. It was created in 1989 with one goal in mind, to bring high-end, elegant formal and casual attire into the local market.
Late after its inception, the raw denim and cotton offerings rapidly evolved to a full-suit apparel collection for Men & Kids.
Throughout the years, the brand has maintained a strong sense of its original roots and elegant taste.
Concrete has contributed greatly to the region’s Apparel landscape, and put locally-rooted fashion brands on the international map.
Business Environment
The highly competitive fashion industry has casted its shadows on almost all players, no matter how big or small they are. It is now clear that improved digital sales and channels integration are the key to optimum business outcome.
After the global COVID-19 outbreak, the industry underwent the biggest challenges ever faced. With reduced physical activities and little to none stores opening, the business environment as we know it has changed and it was about time for everything to get digitized.
The Challenge
Trendy Design Revamping:
The online sales channel for Concrete had an outdated design and limited visual content capabilities. It did not live up to the brand’s aspirations nor its image as a market leader in Men & Kids’ Fashion. Moreover, the website was not mobile friendly, and faced several compatibility issues with high-resolutions images.The main challenge Link TSP’s team had was to make Concrete’s online store stand out in terms of Store Interface and User Experience. The team had to remodel a full UI/UX from scratch.The new design has a set of goals, which are:
1- Preserving Brand Image
To mix the company’s classical and modern identities together for a seamless shopping experience. Combining the brand’s different attributes as novelty and modernity, youth and classicism was the main goal in mind.
2- Channels Integration
Linking all channels together & having a single management point to integrate different business channels for smoother operations, and more efficient resource planning. Inventory, Customer Database, Orders & Shipping, all managed from one place and synced seamlessly across all channels. Moreover, Integrating the online store with payment gateway providers to allow sales to scale further than ever.
Strategy
In order to get the efficiency of fully-integrated Omni-Channel system work along the elegant user interface, the strategy was to cooperate with Concrete team to create a maturity model.
Such model outlined a comprehensive roadmap, to uplift the whole digital commerce presence.
Thus, Link TSP has put together its accumulated experience and cutting-edge technology to tailor a fully-customized design for Concrete. This allows Concrete to set the bar high, compete better locally & globally and continue serving their clientele without breaks.
Execution
1- Deploying Xretail’s Unified Commerce V4.3
Unifying Operations/Less Manual Operations.
First thing was setting up Xretail fully automated solution…
Link TSP provided Concrete team their new digital retail platform in a turnkey delivery seamlessly integrated with:
– Point Of Sale (POS):
Link TSP’s build the connector between Xretail and Retail Pro-V9 POS.
Which introduced a unified management and customer experience across all channels.
Inventory, Order, Customer Databases were all point-linked together in the integration.
Accordingly, any given update in one of the touch points in a single channel is real-time synced across all other channels.
– Payment Gateway:
Providing customers with different payment options via Mastercard, Visa, and local payment gateway.
– Shipping Courier:
As soon as orders are placed, a notification is forwarded to the courier company
with shipping details and order destination, thus, operations no longer has to be
communicated manually.
2- Tailored Elegant Design
Link TSP’s highly skilled UX designers & marketing team had to work creatively in order to innovate a stimulus customer journey that simulates an exceptional experience to Concrete’s customers while shopping online.
Moreover, they equipped the store with necessary tools for admin to provide high quality media for their products. They further developed website device compatibility, and more mobile-friendly UI. Also, a new gesture was added allowing Concrete customers to request a tailoring service for a fully-personalized experience.
Results
1- Boost in Sales, Even During Difficult Times
Since the website’s launch on February 2020, online sales have been on the rise, steadily increasing.
Concrete has been lucky to have their online store up and running by the early time of COVID-19 outbreak when all Concrete stores had to shut down.
That way, Concrete managed to continue serving their customers, and achieved a steady sales growth, with last three months sales on the way to exceed maximum sales of an average physical store.
2- Cost Reduction
Xretail’s unified commerce solutions have made it not only easier in business management, but also more cost effective. As a result of unified operation, a change in single channel now affects other channels seamlessly.
Hence, there is no need to do manual or double work in handling different systems speaking different languages. This has been the keyword when it comes to minimizing human interference between systems.
Moreover, Xretail helped Concrete to achieve an efficient cost reduction, cutting cost spent in store rent, staff payroll, and facilities expenses in physical stores.
3- Better Customer Reach and Experience
Thanks to the strong Marketing capabilities and integration tools Xretail have, the Marketing team in Concrete eventually had the tools needed to increase customer reach beyond their on-ground existence. Now Concrete can deliver to areas where they didn’t have customers before. Moreover, Concrete are now able to better define their customer segmentation through the insightful demographics the system provides. Thanks to advanced Marketing capabilities Xretail provides. This enables Concrete now to use their segmented customer database for remarketing activities, better engagement with customers and better retention rates.
Not to mention, Concrete customers can start enjoying a unique customer experience through XRetail’s unified platform. One that sets the brand apart from its nearest competitors. Concrete customers are currently able to receive fully personalized experience, tailored just for them.
A customer is stored into the system once, and similarly perceived across all digital and physical channels, where they can order from one channel and return it in through another, or receive a promotion for the next order on the other channel.
