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-suite 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 improving digital sales and channel integrations are the key to optimum business outcome. With the global COVID-19 outbreak, the industry currently undergoes the biggest challenges ever faced. With reduced physical activities and little to none stores opening, the business environment as we know it has changed.

The Challenge

  • Trendy Design Revamping The existing online sales channel for Concrete had an outdated design and limited visual content capabilities.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 Men’s Fashion brand. Moreover, the website was not mobile friendly, and faced several compatibility issues with high-resolutions images. One main challenge Link TSP’s team had 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 User interface and shopping experience from scratch. The new design has a set goal: 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 biggest challenge.
  • Lack of Channel Integration Concrete was determined to link all channels together. That is having a single management point to integrate different business channels for smoother operations, and more efficient resource planning. They wanted to have Inventory, Customer Database, and Orders and Shipping managed from one place and synced seamlessly across all channels. Moreover, they were keen to get their online store integrated with payment gateways providers allowing sales to scale further than ever.

Strategy

In order to get the efficiency of fully integrated Omni Channel systems work along the beauty of user interface, The Strategy was to cooperate with Concrete’s team to create a maturity model. Such maturity outlined a comprehensive roadmap, to uplift the whole digital commerce business. 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 compete on the same level, and continue serving their clientele without breaks, and compete on the level they set the bar to.

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. That introduced an 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 had to communicate that manually.

2- Tailored Elegant Design

Link TSP’s highly skilled User Experience designers had to work creatively in order to innovate a stimulus customer journey that simulates the exceptional experience Concrete’s customers get while shopping online. Moreover, they equipped the store with necessary tools for admin to upload high quality images and videos for their products. They further developed website device compatibility, and more mobile-friendly. Furthermore, a new gesture was added allowing Concrete customers to request a tailoring service for a fully personalized experience.

Results

  • Boost in Sales During Difficult Times Since the website’s launch on February, 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

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