Brendan Gillen has gone from helping customers stay 'super dry' to helping them get super sweaty.
Moving on from his role as Superdry eCommerce manager in November 2020, Gillen has taken up the position of chief eCommerce officer at Fight Gear Direct.
Fight Gear Direct is Australia's largest pure play, online-only supplier of boxing, martial arts and training gear, working with leading brands in the category.
Recognising the rapid growth of the category – Grand View Research data indicates that the segment is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.6% to reach US$549.41 billion by 2028 – Fight Gear Direct undertook a major digital relaunch at the start of the year to capitalise on the growth.
As part of its wider eCommerce strategy, overseen by Gillen, the brand underwent a transformation driven by the three R's: rebrand, reinvigorate and reinvest.
This strategy has seen the business' sales increase by 665% in nine months.
"Our analysis in 2020 showed that business was stalling," Gillen said.
"We needed to generate a push that would in turn generate momentum.
"We rebranded to attract new consumers to the brand, entered new markets and invested into more eCommerce centric marketing channels.
"This ensured that we were competing with the bigger, more established brands," he said.
Following the rebrand, Fight Gear Direct redeveloped its CX strategy.
This involved implementing a ‘mobile first’ experience, alternative payment solutions, a price match guarantee and free returns.
These new features combined with new communications tactics across SMS and EDM marketing saw traffic rates increase by 445% year-on-year over nine months.
"We wanted to reinvigorate the existing database and establish a self-perpetuating ecosystem, using best practice and innovative eCommerce strategies," he said.
In the last piece of the R pie, 'reinvestment', the business sought to reinvest in its teams, growing their knowledge and skills.
This reinvestment is manifested in a weekly 'lunch and learn' session where team members are required to present a new technology or strategy to the business which could place it ahead of the tech and service curve.
However, that's not all, Gillen added.
"We took it a step further still, reinvesting in our own team, establishing a new localised customer service squad with a revitalised stringent product knowledge onboarding process, allowing us to deliver higher levels of service to our consumers," he said.
Fight Gear Direct stocks brands including Punch Equipment, Top King, Fairtex, TKO, Adidas and Twins Special.