Moss Bros today reported ecommerce sales up by 58.9% – and said its work to implement a multichannel shopping environment was nearly complete.
Online sales now account for 7.8% of the retailer’s group turnover, the formal menswear specialist said. The update came as the company reported pre-tax profits of £4.8m in the 53 weeks to January 31, up by 9% compared to the 52 weeks to January 25, on revenues of £114.7m, up from £109m last time.
“We are now in the final stages of rolling out our single customer database across our retail stores and websites,” said chief executive Brian Brick in his review of the year. “Once completed this will enable customers to shop for retail and hire seamlessly across a range of channels (in-store, PC, tablet, mobile) and we will be in a position to utilise customer relationship management software tools to focus customer communications on propositions that are relevant and appealing.
“An option for customers to receive their in store payment receipt via email has been introduced, and has been linked to a customer feedback system to monitor customer experience. As well as improving our customer experience, this will increase email collection rates and associated marketing opportunities. Social media is being used successfully to gain traction for the Moss Bros brand across a number of platforms.”
Brick added: “We continue to make good progress in the delivery of our strategic priorities. The modernisation of the store portfolio is achieving the anticipated returns and we have exciting plans for the implementation of our multichannel shopping environment.”
Looking ahead, the company said it planned to build on its ecommerce success with further international websites as well as bringing its multichannel capabilities to bear in the UK and overseas.
Meanwhile, Neil Sansom, omnichannel director of Moss Bros, speaking at IRX 2015, explained to an expert audience in more detail how the company is putting the customer at the heart of its business through its single view of the customer and how it is using data to learn from them.
Speaking to Internet Retailing after his presentation, Sansom said: “Today’s world is very complex. Customers do a lot of research before shopping, there’s lots of channels they can shop in, not just the internet, but mobile, tablets and in-store. Trying to knit those journeys together to try and create that same brand experience is a real challenge today.
“We’ve been approaching it for the last three years, putting an IT infrastructure in place where all of our data feeds into a central system, and then that central system feeds into our new CRM system. That allows us then to do lots of slicing and dicing of customers, based on purchase behaviour, browsing behaviour, purchasing behaviour, the fit of the suit, or of the shirts that they buy. We can look at that in terms of whether they visit a store and purchase or not. If they use free wi-fi we can capture the browsing in store and see if they’ve converted at the till or not. We’re now putting together lots of feeds into the CRM system and trying to understand some of the bigger wins not just for the business for the customer. This isn’t just a sales-led strategy – it’s about making things easier for the customer. We’re giving the customer the highlights, the edits of the products that they would like or prefer.”
