Superdry general brand manager Antony Hampson discusses the impacts of localising the Superdry website to the Australian market.
Superdry executed this localisation in April 2019 and since bringing the site here from the UK, sees approximately 10% of sales come from the online channel, with expectations to grow this share in the short term to 15%.
You've recently localised your eCommerce offering, how is that tracking so far?
It's been exceptional. The response – we've got a loyal customer base who traditionally have always shopped through our concept network – they have had the ability to purchase Superdry online but it was driven and operated out of the UK.
So that created challenges with speed of delivery, with consistency of communication all of those sorts of things, coupled with the fact that we weren't able to provide them with an omni-channel experience.
So localising it made sense, there was significant cost-saving on shipping, we're able to then invest in resources locally to drive that website and the performance for that and also communicate more consistently to our customer base.
So the response has been excellent, we have the functionality within [parent company] Brand Collective to do things like floor to door, ship from store and that allows us to drive our stock pool – be more productive with our stock pool – because what was traditionally very fragmented stock, again would cost us greatly in the high-cost of running a retail business, particularly when you've got 20+ stores.
So having the ability for someone to purchase online and that stock to be shipped to that customer from our stores has allowed us to also be way more productive with our stock and there's significant cost-savings.
So the response has been exceptional, we're really really pleased and we're hopeful that that channel will continue to improve over the next 12 months.