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Branded applications are a difficult needle to thread. They offer the opportunity to provide a better mobile experience, interact more deeply with customers, and provide a touchpoint to gather more information about customer habits and preferences. On the other hand, it’s hard to get someone to download your app (rather than just entering their URL), and even if they do, they’re not sure if they’re actually going to use it: the average smartphone has over 80 apps downloaded, yet the average user only uses nine of those apps, both one and both. and about 30 both a month.
These are difficult hurdles for any application to tackle, but that hasn’t intimidated British fashion logo AllSaints or its chief innovation officer, James Reid. The company unveiled its new app in partnership with NewStore in March 2023, largely to build a connection with its unwavering biggest customers, of which there are many.
AllSaints, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, operates more than 200 retail stores in 27 countries. Although the logo was founded and is based in Great Britain, the North American market has its largest market. But perhaps the logo’s greatest asset is its near-universal appeal, with a clientele ranging from “very young to nothing,” as Reid puts it, and a 50-50 split between men’s and women’s clothing shoppers.
“The opportunity with this is that anyone can be a customer, and we need to talk to everyone; the challenge is that anyone can be a customer, and we need to talk to everyone,” Reid said. We don’t have a niche that we’re targeting, it’s very inclusive. “
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The explanation for the big appeal is the logo’s core collection with “a little bit of a head start,” Reid explained in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “So, it’s a logo that puts you under your skin,” he explains. The affinity that other people develop is strong. We tracked down many other people who bought their first t-shirt when they were teenagers, and while they’ve gone through other stages of their lives over the past 30 years, I stuck with the logo with slightly different use cases.
It’s all about fostering customer value, and that’s precisely what the AllSaints app aims to do. Here’s how:
AllSaints already had an app, but “I would describe it as a little basic,” Reid said diplomatically. The previous application was really more of a test, built in-house and “launched and then abandoned,” with significant overhead required to run it. he.
In October 2021, the company underwent a major overhaul, moving from a custom in-house e-commerce formula to Salesforce Commerce Cloud. “As part of this exercise and because of the brand’s audience, we knew there was a significant opportunity for an app. , but it had to be cross-platform, because the previous one wasn’t,” Reid said. “And it had to be very, very connected to our new e-commerce platform so that the two things weren’t aspect after aspect. without any relation between them. “
AllSaints learned that they didn’t have the internal resources to create such an app. After looking at several solutions, the company settled on NewStore because it was “by far the most productive combination of a popular platform that will give you the most of what you want, but also the ability to follow through with that,” Reid said.
The rest, as they say, is history. The app was introduced in March 2023 in the UK and US. The U. S. economy is experiencing significant geographic expansion planned for this year, and the effects are “in line with our expectations or better,” Reid said. At the end of January 2024, less than a year after launch, the number of installs amounted to 150,000 and engagement remained stable. What’s most impressive, however, is that the apps’ conversion rates are five times higher than those of the brand’s mobile internet users.
“If you make the effort to download an app, at most you’ll be able to identify who your most loyal consumers are, for lack of a broader term, herbal selection,” Reid said. “It gives you that maximum identification by default, and that’s the component of why we’re seeing those very different conversion rates, because users are this [incredibly unwavering] subset of the visitor base. This helps us know who our engaged consumers are and better serve them.
Reid is transparent that the current form of the app is “a smart starting point, but not the definitive answer. “And it has big plans to “dedicate more to it in terms of senior roles and involvement” now that it’s established.
“Personally, I can’t stand the word loyalty, it sounds like some kind of Walmart points, which for us is not [the right approach],” Reid said. “I don’t know exactly what the answer is yet, but we aspire to praise logo engagement with increased logo engagement. Imagine a hypothetical situation where you have a virtual backstage of your exhibition twice a year for a guest audience of online viewers, the other people interact to the fullest with the logo. If I can find a way to measure how they interact with our Instagram posts, check Twitter feeds, buy things, make it to stores, and rate products online, I’d rather use this “engagement basket” instead of “You bought 3 things this year and spent £5,000. “, so you’ll get £20 off. ” That’s not what we’re looking to do.
“Our CEO has a wonderful way of looking at things, which I’d rather borrow from him blatantly: Remember the outdated dollhouses that could simply be stripped of their façade?Imagine if the organization was like this and we could just peel back the façade. “At our central workplace in London, we have an in-house workshop that makes garments; Maybe we can make it visible. Or we have our own photo studios on-site. for product images, but maybe we can have some engagement in that framework. There are a few parades a year and many other events, maybe we can attract more people to this community. This certainly adds a great price for us, but it still adds price for the visitor and makes things less transactional.
All this virtual transformation and evolution is great, but it doesn’t make up the big picture. ” We’re a big online retailer, it’s a vital channel for us, but we’re also a firm believer in traditional retail,” Reid said. There’s nothing better than walking into a store and smelling an item of clothing. “
That’s why, in June, AllSaints will also roll out NewStore’s cellular POS formula across its entire store fleet. “This will be the third leg of the stool in terms of direct-to-consumer business, because we’re going to have integration between the app and the website, but also tight integration between the app and the store,” Reid said.
“Imagine a situation where you make a wish list in the app and then walk into a store,” he said. “We can take a look at that wish list and tell you right away if we have the sizes you’re looking for. “We can then take it a step further and place it in the runner’s app, which will send an instruction to the user in the warehouse to stop by and pick up those sizes if they’re not in the store and place them in the correct locker room. It’s very service-oriented and is starting to blur the lines between the customer, the app, and our store staff, a similar app that is interdependent and allows for communication between the two.
But even that doesn’t mark the end of Reid’s ambitious plan; After all, he’s the lead innovator. As he explained, the company already offers an in-store “endless aisle” with the ability to order products online that aren’t in stock, but “I need to combine this with the app so that the customer can explain their wish list, we’ll be able to take a look at it and say, ‘Yes, I have all of these, but I don’t have that length in this store. If you wish, I can receive it at your home the next day. And then in a single transaction, a single payment, it will go directly to our e-commerce order control system. It’s the Holy Grail I’ve been looking for 10 years in this industry. I can’t wait to see him in position this year. From a service perspective, it’s a game changer.
Before the implementation, before the platform was revamped, something even more basic was needed to make this vision a reality: a deep overhaul of the company’s stock control systems, to combine everything into “a single set that’s visual across all channels simultaneously,” Reid noted. This effort began before the pandemic and served as the structural foundation for all the other projects that followed.
“We technologists are very smart about looking for what shines upstream,” Reid said. “You want the right presentation, you want the right engagement from the visitor’s perspective, but what’s behind it also has to be really effective and very accurate. . The last thing you want is for the visitor to take a look at the app and see that it’s in a specific store’s inventory, move on to the store, and then it’s not there. And while it’s wonderful to have access to everything and have visibility into everything, you want to do it in a way that maintains profitability. Because we don’t want a visitor to place an order and get six packages. We want to get as close to him as possible. There’s a lot of balance and a lot of nuances, but it’s actually starting to fall into place. Come back and ask me six months from now and I bet I’ll be sitting here with a big arrogant smile on my face.
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