UK-based fashion brand rag & bone is looking to accelerate its D2C operations globally through the creation of a scalable, customer-first online experience as the brand looks to capitalise on growing popularity of unique designer brands.
Founded in 2002 by British-born duo Marcus Wainwright and David Neville, rag & bone is known for its quality products “made to last and meant to matter to customers for years to come.” Its classic mix of British tailoring and edgy collections that embody New York’s authentic styles is available online and in 42 stores internationally.
In response to industry headwinds and an increasing demand for innovative and highly personalised digital-first experiences, rag & bone decided to strategically focus on growing out its omnichannel and DTC capabilities. However, the brand’s ecommerce site was running on an older, legacy reference architecture that created critical customer pain points as a result – namely, slow site speeds and high abandonment rates in the cart and during the checkout process.
rag & bone tapped Astound Commerce to execute its vision for an enhanced customer experience, embarking on a strategic partnership that has become the foundation of the brand’s digital evolution.
Following a detailed project discovery phase, Astound Commerce completed a brand, web analytics and SEO analysis and customer experience audit – determining that an ecommerce replatform and redesign were the best approaches for the brand’s business in achieving its digital transformation goals and vision.
Astound Commerce leveraged its proprietary accelerator, Launch360: Storefront, to reduce cost and speed time to market for rag & bone, upgrading their legacy Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation to a fast, modern reference architecture. Core to the experience enhancement, it integrated Page Designer modules, which enable the brand to offer customers personalisation, more-robust merchandising, and compelling storytelling – all capable of being activated without the need for development team involvement to improve speed-to-value.
Third-party integrations for key ecommerce features such as ratings and reviews and tax calculations were also implemented to improve usability. Astound enabled the transition of rag & bone’s customer relationship management (CRM) system to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and replaced its enterprise resource platform (ERP) to better support the brand’s cross-functional processes and omnichannel capabilities.
To deliver a more seamless shopping experience, fulfilment operations were centralised by integrating new payment providers (including an end-to-end cross-border solutions provider) and replacing rag & bone’s order management system (OMS). The new OMS and optimised checkout process have enabled the brand to unlock future omnichannel strategies, which include click-and-collect capabilities. An overhaul of the customer service experience was also deployed, led by an updated customer service platform and the integration of more self-service options – key features that include order tracking and returns processing. Lastly, a sleek new redesign of the front-end user interface capped off the ecommerce enhancements delivered for the fashion brand by Astound.
Melanie Masterson, Vice President, Ecommerce at rag & bone, comments: “Our goal is to create a seamless customer experience by building a strong omnichannel foundation through a new OMS and bring those capabilities to life through a new website replatform and redesign.
“We wanted a partner for execution and strategy. This allowed us to support the functions of omnichannel and give us more creative flexibility to support future initiatives, lay the foundation for personalised experiences and stories, and ultimately scale our business. We’ve also taken this success to build on our partnership, from partnering on our SEO strategy to helping us think through how we maximise this new platform foundation for our business long term.”
Ongoing, Astound Commerce will continue SEO and marketing initiatives to drive forward customer engagement and demand as rag & bone further delivers on its DTC strategy.
