Leading lifestyle clothing retailer Fat Face is the latest fashion retailer to embrace omni-channel, implementing its ‘shop your way’ strategy to meet growing demand from customers who are using multiple channels.
And it has paid off in spades: the new eCommerce platform launched in November and Fat Face subsequently recorded its best ever week of full-price sales in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Working with WHISHWORKS, a MuleSoft integration and Big Data specialist, the retailer, has successfully implemented and deployed MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform. This will power Fat Face’s ‘shop your way’ vision through an omni-channel strategy, enabling consumers to shop across all devices and channels with a consistent experience.
With almost 30 years of operation, Fat Face has accumulated a number of, now legacy, systems that has led to siloed data, preventing the retailer from executing on a multi-channel, multi-geography strategy. It became apparent that custom coding and a traditional point-to-point integration approach were negatively affecting customer experiences, leading Fat Face to select MuleSoft to adopt an API-led approach.
By replacing point-to-point connections with APIs, Fat Face is eliminating data inaccuracies, such as out-of-stock inventory, and speeding up access to business-critical information such as price details, store product data and customer history.
Fat Face has created an application network through API-led connectivity that allows the retailer to innovate without compromise, building vital customer loyalty in the process and future-proofing its business as new channels and services are added over time.
Fat Faces’ new omni-channel experience built on Anypoint Platform was put to the test during the run up to Christmas 2017. In less than one year after bringing on WHISHWORKS and MuleSoft, Fat Face completed rolling out an API-led approach across more than half a dozen business critical systems, including CIMS Oracle Database and Red Prairie WMS Oracle Database, and transitioning its eCommerce platform to Salesforce Commerce Cloud. “Efficient and open connectivity between our applications, partners and customers is key to transforming our business model,” says Simon Ratcliffe, Infrastructure Director at Fat Face. “To reach this point of success in our journey it required careful, strategic planning with a long-term view. By helping us build an application network with APIs, WHISHWORKS and MuleSoft are powering our omnichannel transformation, enabling us to offer customers consistent, highly-personalised experiences across all channels.”
Following the successful launch of the e-commerce platform, WHISHWORKS will continue enabling Fat Face to integrate more systems with Anypoint Platform, planning for the next phase of our omnichannel transformation, which will involve the integration of our ePOS platform and the launch of mobile applications.
“As more customers look to interact with a brand via digital channels, retailers need to rethink their business model and infrastructure to offer a seamless customer experience across touchpoints,” adds Edward Davies, Sales Director at WHISHWORKS. “With an API-led connectivity strategy, Fat Face is able to achieve the speed, productivity, and operational efficiency necessary for a successful omnichannel strategy. While taking the new eCommerce platform live in time for the Christmas period was our number one priority, a significant part of our contribution rests in enabling their internal team work with MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform, design and build APIs and applications, perhaps most importantly, leverage those assets across other business streams.”
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